The reason you buy this magazine is very important to our editorial staff here at 4-Wheel & Off-Road magazine. If that reason is as simple as "I like the photos," then you probably aren't reading this column anyway. If you only buy our rag for the advertisements, then you probably aren't reading this either. Those are both honest, good answers, and we appreciate it. But if in fact you buy the magazine for the editorial content we deliver in an honest, ethical manner, then this column is for you. Editorial integrity is a cornerstone of ethical journalism, and is also a basic concept of the Fourth Estate that we belong to and hold dear to our hearts. The basic premise here is that there is a separation of church and state, or in our case editorial content and advertising. Simply put, you believe and trust what we write because we aren't swayed or influenced by our advertisers. If we report that a tire X worked better than tire Y, there is no reason for you to believe that the manufacturer of tire X paid us off to write good things about its tires. Likewise, we don't allow our advertisers to mandate what we write simply because they want us to. Our selection of topics, products, events, and happenings comes from what we believe is a service to the reader, not a service to the advertisers.
Of course, many times it does appear that we are in bed with a certain manufacture or advertiser, but we strive at all times to stave off that perception by sometimes going out of our way to prevent it. If you notice, we rarely have a product review where the manufacturer advertises across the page from our edit. Likewise, we don't run edit on tire X across from an ad for tire Y. We attempt to be fair and impartial to all concerned, without whoring ourselves out to the biggest spender as some other truck-based magazines do. Would you really trust what we write if we sold our cover to Chevrolet and had nothing but new Chevys on the cover, and the blurbs reading all about Chevys? Maybe if our title was Chevy 4x4, but even then how could you get an honest read? Even the General knows that this type of practice would hurt their advertising in the long run. Unlike other mags, we won't sell our cover to the highest bidder, and we only promote what we truly believe is in the best interest of the readership.
However, many times we have no control over the entire magazine package; only the editorial content. Such is the case recently with our Toyota FJ Cruiser build. During the time we built the Ultimate FJ for our Ultimate Adventure, we also reported on the new vehicle as a First Drive, and Toyota also heavily advertised the FJ within our pages. Does this look like we are partial to Toyota? Maybe it does look a little fishy, but if a reader was to check out all of the other automotive 4x4 and truck titles, they would discover that Toyota heavily promoted the FJ in all of the other mags as well. In addition, the FJ Cruiser was important news to our segment, so other magazines reported on the new vehicle too, as would be expected. The bottom line is that there were no hidden concessions, deals, or bonuses (at least for the edit staff) for any of the edit on the FJ Cruiser. We picked the rig for our Ultimate Adventure vehicle because it is new, different, and the coolest new 4x4 available at the time. We're proud of what we did and how we built it, and stand behind our editorial integrity and reporting to you the whole story.