In just two weeks, more than 15,000 subscribers have agreed to pay $2.50 a month for the publication. It had been a free insert in the newspaper and will still be available for free in newsstand copies of the Star-Telegram.

The Star-Telegram developed the publication with FYI Television, a Grand Prairie, Texas-based TV listings company.

Other McClatchy papers have changed their TV guide inserts to subscription-based models with less success, including the company’s North and South Carolina papers, which offer subscriptions to ON-TV Magazine, a product of NTVB Media.

“The new guidelines say paid or sponsored links should be identified as such; Web sites should not promote products in exchange for advertising; and sponsored microsites should be visually distinct from the main Web site. A section on interruptive advertising says such ads should be subject to editorial approval. ASME wants such ads to have a prominent ‘close’ or ’skip’ button and last no more than 10 seconds.”

Also, ads for tablet media should “look different from editorial pages to avoid confusing the two, since tablets’ ads often aren’t displayed opposite editorial the way they are in print.”

The guidelines, like ones released last fall, are purely voluntary and, particularly in this economy, are likely to be ignored, the report says.

Forbes, for one publication, is unconcerned. It is expanding a program begun last fall that puts advertisers and outside contributors on equal footing with its editorial staffers, AdWeek says in another report this week.

“Under a three-month-old program called AdVoice, advertisers could pay to have their labeled blogs appear alongside those of editorial staffers. Now, their contributions can run anywhere on the site that a staff writer or contributor can appear, not just the blogs section,” AdWeek says.

Microsoft and Toyota have signed on.

“The idea of Lewis D’Vorkin, the company’s new chief product officer, to mix advertising content with edit is a dramatic shift for a historic business brand that once prided itself on not using freelancers,” the report says.

“After seeing the power of marketing effective viral content, brands are scurrying to invest in this type of material — and in many cases, are cutting back on their traditional advertising spending as a result,” the report says.

“It’s taking an editorial approach to telling your brand story, and the social-media space just lends itself so beautifully to that combination,” said Miki Berardelli, chief marketing officer at Tory Burch.

But, as online technology continues to find its footing, advertisers say they still get a better quality of reader with print magazines. So, regardless of  the quantity or readers available online and the fact that its results can be immediately tracked, print ads won’t be going away entirely anytime soon.

The old editorial/advertising divide argument is moot in the fashion world, WWD reminds us. “[F]ashion magazines blurred that line long ago — just check the credits in fashion shoots against what labels advertise.”

A bright spot in the trend, sort of, is that “as magazines cut staff or shutter altogether, the new editorial focus of fashion brands is providing a soft — and sometimes lucrative — landing spot for journalists and editors.”

Diller said the two-year-old Daily Beast, which posted a 44 percent revenue increase, will be profitable soon.

Asked about failed talks of a merger between The Daily Beast and Newsweek, Diller said Brown’s background in magazines makes print a logical step. “The idea that that sensibility (of the Daily Beast) would then come to a print product as a companion piece made industrial sense,” he said.

The guidelines are meant to ensure that readers can tell the difference between editorial content and ads, the group’s CEO, Sid Holt, told MediaWeek.

“But,” says MediaWeek, “with magazines scrapping for every ad they can get and to compete with digital and broadcast media, where interruptive ads and product placement abound, publishers, advertisers and even some editors have expressed doubts about the relevance of the guidelines.”

Robin Steinberg, director of print investment and activation at MediaVest, said the guidelines make magazines less competitive. “This continues to hold a noose around our neck,” she said.

Violation of the guidelines results in disqualification from ASME’s National Magazine Awards and a “stern letter” from the group.

ASME  is also revising its digital guidelines to reflect the growing use of invasive and interruptive ads online and federal rules requiring bloggers to disclose commercial ties. That process is expected to be finished later this year, MediaWeek says.

One hundred and thirty-six magazines showed growth, compared to 25 in the third quarter of 2009.

The ads are “so bad I can imagine advertisers interpreting it as the newspaper industry’s no-confidence vote in itself,” Shafer says. “Nobody would blame advertisers if they looked at the NAA ad and used it as an excuse to pull their buys from … papers.”

A second campaign for magazines that the Magazine Publishers of America recently claimed is working also fails to impress Shafer, though he doesn’t explain specifically why.

“If anybody understands how to make a print advertisement that really, really works, it should be newspaper and magazine people,” Shafer says. “But these two campaigns are so bumbling, so unpersuasive, so dull, that you’ve got to wonder whether any advertising intelligence went into making them. Maybe the goal was to sell the newspaper and magazine businesses as outposts of the desperate and pitiful worthy of advertiser charity. If so, Clios all around.”

“The pitch is this: We’ll sell you a blog, and your content will live alongside that of Forbes’ journalists and bloggers,” Advertising Age explains. “This isn’t the ’sponsored post’ of yore; rather, it is giving advocacy groups or corporations such as Ford or Pfizer the same voice and same distribution tools as Forbes staffers, not to mention the Forbes brand.”

The new “product,” as Ad Age calls it, is called AdVoice and is being guided by True/Slant CEO and former Forbes editor Lewis DVorkin, who is returning to Forbes as chief product officer of Forbes Media in the wake of the magazine’s purchase of the True/Slant blog.

“DVorkin has been pulling apart the website and magazine, merging staff and contributed content, and generally blowing apart how journalism, blogging, reader contributions and advertising fit together on the web, in the magazine and everywhere Forbes content is published” Ad Age says.

“‘For the last however many decades of traditional media, you’re a reader so your stuff can only go here,’ Mr. DVorkin said, starting to get animated. ‘You’re an advertiser so stuff can only go here. And our stuff? It goes right here. But there’s a flow of content that’s contextual. Anything can appear in any place as long as it’s contextual – that’s the web and we are bringing that sensibility to the magazine.’”

Forbes says it will be clear who (advertisers, Forbes journalists, whoever) is doing the talking on the various parts of its site.

AdVoice clients – there are none so far – will pay a flat fee, “which means that marketers producing the most appealing content will, theoretically, get more readers and a better deal on a cost-per-thousand-readers, or CPM, basis.”

Five publishers joined to tout "The Power of Print."

“It’s mission accomplished in that, with all the scuttlebutt about the changing media landscape, even through the recession, what really resounded is that all along, the consumer continued to be highly engaged in magazines,” Michael Clinton, president, marketing and publishing director for Hearst Magazines told News & Tech. “We (publishers) saw it in our circulation, we saw it in our audience growth – even among younger people – all of the fundamental consumer statistics have been very strong.”

What has Clinton so excited is a survey of 5,000 readers by GfK MRI in which 62 percent of respondents  agreed with the statement: “This ad made me realize how important magazines are in my daily life,” while 93 percent said they agreed with the statement: “There are a lot of media choices out there, but magazines still matter to me.”

The publishers launched the multi-million-dollar ad campaign in March with print ads, including variations on the message above, and a two-minute video.

The October issue of News & Tech is to have more about the ad campaign.

The magazine’s ad pages are up 12 percent for September over a year ago, and single copy sales grew by 24.7 percent in the first half of 2010.

People StyleWatch will also add an 11th issue this year and increase its base rate while Cosmopolitan increases it base rate as well.