FTC issues report on digital data collection; calls for more consumer control

Interested in your online data privacy? This just in from AdAge; link to full FTC report below: "The Federal Trade Commission wants companies that buy, sell and manage data for marketing to create a central online hub providing information about the data they collect and how it's used.

"In a much-anticipated report on data brokers today, the agency called on Congress to establish new rules requiring data firms to be more transparent about their practices and to give consumers more control."

http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/data-brokers-call-transparency-accountability-report-federal-trade-commission-may-2014/140527databrokerreport.pdf

Worthy of print

We’ve had a lot of queries from young writers lately. I usually ask them why they don’t do something on line. “It’s not the same,” they say. “Anyone can do that.”

With each query, I can’t help but ponder a future where print media exists as the selective, truly archival-worthy media. I think of the old parchments and illuminated books discovered in caves and long-forgotten libraries and how important their messages must have been within the context of their time. Inaccessible to so many. Rare and coveted. And when they’re discovered, modern man studies them in awe — a gift from ancient scribes allowing us a peek into their time, a glimpse at what was important in their worldview, important enough to preserve for sometimes thousands of years.

My thoughts float further back in time when important information was engraved in stone or painted on rock walls in accessible and not-so-accessible places. Yet another

What is Native Advertising? What is GV's policy on Native Ads?

What is "native advertising" in Grand Valley Magazine? New-and-here-to-stay media content category is what it is.

Editorial and advertising have been, for the most part, the two clear-and-different bastions of media for well over 100 years; complete with physical walls separating them. A symbiotic love-hate relationship.

But recently, especially with magazines, the editorial and advertising folks got together and a hybrid of the two, known now as native advertising, was born. Still in such