• The New York Times, Monday, September 26, 2011 4:16 PM

"The examples of magazines teaming up with e-commerce sites, almost all of them announced within the last several weeks, could practically fill a shopping mall," writes Eric Wilson in a piece dissecting this trend.

While fashion mags especially are hardly known to have air-tight edit/advertising walls, still, this move by such mags as Vogue, GQ and Esquire (not a fashion pub) is definitely a blurring of boundaries. As mags become retailers, department stores, which do advertise in such pubs, could see them as competitors.

Such mags could also lose the trust of their readers, points out Lucky's editor Brandon Holley (who is careful to note that her pub does not take a commission when its editors list their favorite items on the Web site Thisnext.com but she's splitting hairs, we think.)

Read the whole story at The New York Times »