Bloodsucking at LAT

How many times do we have to jump the shark before there are no more sharks to jump?

 

If it saves more jobs, who gives a damn?

Your paper's credibility won't feed your kids.

 

This is bad, but is this worse that putting the bulk of the Sunday LAT inside the comics?

 

I wonder if that ad -- with the Times logo, and with that photo underneath -- was offered to the advertisers as a paid placard ad for the windows of all the Times' on-street newspaper boxes?

Just in principle, and not considering the cash cow that this probably was, I'd have been more OK with that than I am with this.

The paper probably still could have charged a bundle, and the advertiser still would have gotten good play and plenty of widespread and compelling promotion for its product.

 

Not if they run it wrap like they do our half-page 1A wrap ad -- which is connected to the last page in the A-section (often the op/ed page, for us).

Discard the ad, you can't read the opinion columns. So you're stuck with it, which is a pain in the ass because it doesn't fold right and it's awkward to hold. We've gotten hundreds of angry phone calls about it. Everybody hates it. But hey, we got our money, right? :

 

This is probably the idea of Trib innovation chief ... Ah, hell, the a-hole whose name I can't remember right now.

 

This is extremely poor marketing by the LA Times. Your masthead is your corporate logo, your brand. To sell it to somebody else is not smart. I'm surprised the newsprint wasn't soggy from flop sweat, 'cause that's what this reeks of.
People buy the paper to read it. If you take such a flamboyant means of saying you think your business is delivering eyeballs to advertisers, X number of readers will conclude you don't give a shit about the product you are selling them. And they'll be right.
Front page ads don't bother me. They've been around in newspapers since forever. This, however, is what Harvard Business School calls "pissing in the soup."

 

That's just it. IT WON'T SAVE JOBS AND it stinks to high Heaven.

Our credibility may be the only thing we take away from our journalism careers. I don't want to just sell it to the highest bidder.

 

And you know this how?

 

The LA Times has had Hollywood's balls in its mouth for many, many years.

What's new?

 

Pusbag . . . Leah Pusbag.