"I have always been interested in how a supposedly independent press so often manages to report on foreign affairs from the point of view of the State Department," writes Diana Barahona.

Forget about focus groups. Before launching their new weekly glossy magazine for women, "Look," executives at Britain's IPC Media (a Time Warner company) engaged in "immersion research," or ethnography. "We went out to our audience," explained IPC's Chris Taylor. "We literally lived for weeks at a time with [potential] readers in their homes.