Does Forbes Wine Cross a Journalistic Ethics Line?

Forbes has announced the launch of Forbes Wine. It's an exension of its Forbes Vetted website with a twist – not only will it evalate wines, but it will actually sell them.

Forbes Wine will have original editorial content, formal wine reviews and ratings, a sommelier-led wine club and an e-commerce store.

Clive Pursehouse has been named Executive Editor, with Stevie Stacionis appointed as Wine Club Curator and Cory Baldwin as Vice President of Forbes Wine.

This is part of the change in the publishing industry that began some years ago as the internet eroded the ability of traditional media to rely upon advertising to provide the bulk of revenue and profits.

For magazines, the last few years have been a special challenge. Twenty years ago, before Google, magazines relied upon newsstand sales to attract interest and a combination of newsstand sales and direct mail to build a subscriber base.

When Google and similar searches eroded the advertising base, print media turned to online search in an attempt to maintain heir readership. Interestingly, recent studies indicate that by and large, subscribers are "sticking;" it's just that they are finding it very hard to get new subscribers.

So newspapers and magazines have turned to other approaches. One of trhe most successful has been The New York Times, which has a stable of online publications that give away a substantial amount of content but if you want more, you need to subscribe. For instance, once the Times has a cooking page. You can read the articles for free, but if you want the recipes for the foods discussed, you need to subscribe. Wirecutter tests and recomments consumer products. It also provides affiliate links so you can buy the product from Amazon or other online retailers, etc.

he New York Times has largely led the transformation and has become quite profitable in doing so. One of its innovations was Wirecutter, which reviews consumer products in a chatty fashion and provides links to online retailers; The Times acts as an affiliate and makes a small commission from these.

Wine-Searcher has editorial content, but its main function is to help consumers "find the best prices for wines, beers and spirits" by searching thousands of online stores.

Forbes has taken this a step further, becoming in essence a retailer itself. It will operate its own wine club and will also hav an e-commerce store. We asked Forbes exactly how this would work, but they hadn't had a chance to respond yet, but we assume Forbes has contacted with a third party to actually do the order fulfillment.