Magazine Media. Better. Believe It.

This is great news. The Association of Magazine Media (MPA) just announced a new ad campaign that focuses on our industry’s greatest strengths – credibility, trust and engagement.

“With the tagline ‘Magazine Media. Better. Believe It,’ the campaign, which is spearheaded by the Association of Magazine Media, gets in on the discussion around fake news by positioning magazines as ‘the most credible, trusted, engaging content over any other form of media,’” writes Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke in WWD.

She includes this clip from the MPA’s campaign announcement:

“In a media world where three-out-of-four Americans say they have fallen for fake headlines, and marketers as well as consumers are challenging the legitimacy of many media outlets, we believe it is imperative to remind our customers about the tremendous resources the industry puts behind our content platforms. This campaign is designed to reaffirm to both of these audiences that our industry remains dedicated to creating the most professionally researched, written, curated and best-in-class content.”

The campaign, which runs from October through next March, will run in both digital and print properties of the 123 brands of the association’s membership.

True, this comes at a time when the industry in flux, Bloomgarden-Smoke reminds us, with some major titles like Rolling Stone looking for buyers, and a wave of editor moves. D.B. Hebbard of Talking New Media says even with all that – and the wave of mistrust that came along with the fake news fiasco – he remains convinced of one thing.

Even with the disruption in the industry, Hebbard writes, “none of that means the quality of print magazines has declined, nor that readers who buy them enjoy them less. We need to promote and market magazines (and newspapers, too) because a well-educated population is vital to our society, while an InfoWars/Breitbart reading population is a direct threat to democracy and prosperity.”

The trust bump of print media is real – both in the U.S. and internationally. Trust and quality are truly the saving graces of our industry, and it’s great to see industry leadership boldly promoting this. As publishers move past the disruption and onto business models that work, they are once again taking their place as the authoritative, trusted media on which consumers can rely. And that bodes well for this industry.