The American Psychological Association (APA), like many professional associations, publishes a monthly newsletter to keep members informed about its progress as a professional organization. Of course, the APA’s monthly newsletter has been transformed over the years from a newsletter, to a newspaper, to its current form as a glossy magazine. It is filled with feel-good stories designed to appeal to its psychologist membership about psychologists who do this or that for a living, and how they’re making a difference through clinical practice, teaching, research or some other modality.

In addition, there’s a lot of news briefs and op-ed pieces from whoever the current president is, and various division heads. Heck, even the CEO of the business has a column! And why not, it seems like any content is good content for the APA’s monthly communication to its membership (entitled, Monitor on Psychology).

But what probably strikes any long-time member and reader of this publication is the sheer number of APA advertisements for APA services in the APA newsletter. There are anywhere between 15 and 20 ads per issue that are from an APA-associated business or organization. I first realized this when I saw how many ads are from the APA’s publishing arm, pushing the books they publish over all other psychology and science publishers. This irked me back in 1996 because my book was published by a publisher that wasn’t the APA. I realized then that my professional organization, the one I pay dues into every year to help represent my interests, was directly competing with me!

Now of course, just the like APA book publishing arm, my publisher is more than welcomed to pay APA its advertising fees to publish an ad in the Monitor. Yet, something strange must be going on here… Because perusing my latest February 2005 issue of the Monitor, I found 15 ads for APA-related businesses and organizations versus the 16 non-APA ads in the entire issue (dis-including the job classifieds and everything after that, since those pages are not glossy like the rest of the magazine and have a far smaller readership). Even more astounding is that of those 15 APA ads, 10 of them (or 66%) were full page ads for APA-related businesses and services. Of the 16 non-APA ads, only 1 was a full page ad.

I guess the lesson to be learned from this is that APA-related businesses and organizations have a lot of marketing and advertising dollars to spend, which must be reflected in the pricing of what it is they offer. Or that the APA membership is somehow indirectly subsidizing the ability for all of these APA-related businesses to do so much heavy, full-page advertising in the membership’s monthly communication medium. Or that the APA-related businesses must have a completely different marketing plan than almost every other business related to psychologists, since practically no one else is advertising to the extent and breadth that all APA businesses (even the brand-new gradPsych publication!) are.

Something is not cool about this picture, and I hope the APA Monitor is listening to at least one of its members. Make APA ads affordable to more businesses and maybe the Monitor, a publication for its members, would be able to better serve its members through a more diverse advertising base. The current situation is just plain ridiculous.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 31 Jan 2005
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