Virtual Fishwrap

Fishwrap, according to Urban Dictionary, refers to "any printed journalistic medium with such low credibility and standards in acceptable journalism that its only useful function is to wrap fresh fish in."

I earned my marketer's chops publishing a corporate magazine when those were all the rage. I won't claim it had high standards. But it wasn't fishwrap, either.

Corporate magazines can be powerful content marketing vehicles, particularly for B2B companies.

Speaking of vehicles, Content Marketing Institute credits John Deere with the invention of content marketing with its magazine The Furrow (CMI overlooks Poor Richard's Alamanack.)

A handful of corporate magazines still circulate today in print (CMI's Chief Content Officer is a laudable example); but most, if not folded, have gone digital (McKinsey Quarterly, for example).

Flip-book software may spawn a renaissance of the corporate magazine, but I have doubts.

Like sustained blogging, publishing a corporate magazine is a tough row to hoe (just ask John Deere). 

A luxury-grade magazine gobbles thousands of dollars in fees for freelance journalists, editors, photographers and graphic designers. But that's what you need to spend to hook readers. 

A flip-book, cobbled together on the cheap, won't make the grade.

At best, it's no more than virtual fishwrap.