You Know Things are Bad When the LAT Sells an A-1 Ad -- and Not a Wrap

If there wasn't an attempt to make the ad look like a real story, I'd have no problem with it the way things are these days. But A1 was considered sacred ground because it was the "face" of the paper, where you proudly declare "This is the most important stuff going on in the world." Apples $1.41 a pound doesn't quite cut it. It's was also the one page that represented the paper's "independence" from outside pressure. You just don't see other news organizations like radio or TV attempting to confuse their audience with ads masquerading as news content (Paul Harvey excepted).

 

I'm all about that. I just don't get why the A1 is some magic credibility real estate. There's ads everywhere else.

 

It's 1970s-hick-weekly ugly, especially with type so close to the heavy-border box. And it's cheesy that the publisher would have been OK with running a reverse-L-shaped ad down the right side and across the bottom. But it's clearly an ad, I don't think anyone's going to mistake it for a news story. I wouldn't have a problem with an ad stripped across the bottom of A-1. The first place I did layout, there was one across the bottom of the sports cover every day, about four inches deep. Tacky for the LAT, but not immoral.

 

Rick, it's not the fact that it's on A-1. That's over and done with.

It's the fact that it's so hideous, and more importantly that it's encroaching on the solid line between editorial and advertising by masquerading as a news story.

Put a big fat strip ad for a car dealership or a TV show at the bottom, I got no problem with it. Put a sticker on the cover, whatever. But make sure it looks like an ad, so we're not deceiving the readers.

It's kind of like the balk rule: the intent is not to promote your product, the intent is to deceive. And that's what crosses the line.

 

I thought the big word "advertisement" at the top and the thick box around it did a good enough job of staying on the right side of the line.

 

And again, for all of you who have this misguided idea that selling these types of ads is going to save jobs:

It's not.

This is not some new innovation in advertising or a new revenue stream that's going to keep the ship afloat, if only we continue to accept this type of advertising. That's a complete fantasy.

What's going to save jobs is coming up with a new revenue stream, some kind of viable business model. This isn't even close. It's just advertisers seeing what they can get away with. And we're letting them do it.

 

I wonder how much they got for it. In the 1990s I was working on a sports section that sometimes ran a penis-enlargement ad. One day the publisher was walking through the newsroom and the SE called out, in a light-hearted tone, "Hey ----, are you gonna sell us another dick ad?" And the publisher says, "That dick ad's gonna bring in four hundred grand a year." I was surprised. Big money in dick ads, I guess.

 

No, but maybe it replaces some of the revenue that went away when Circuit City or some other business died?

Are TV networks letting advertisers "get away" with Viagra ads on every sports broadcast? I hear major radio stations running spots for herbal snake oil shit and credit consolidators that I know are total bullshit. Those wouldn't have gotten beyond the receptionist 30 years ago. It's a different world, and you make money where you can. Sad? Probably, but also true.

 

Herb, I never want to see this man in here again.

 

Last one looked like a map of Florida.

 

There's another one on the way, apparently, this one to go in Calendar:

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2009/04/dont_look_now_but_lat_doe.php

Thanks, buckweaver. We're not only letting them do it, we're apparently encouraging/promoting the idea of them to doing it. That's how it sounds in this instance, anyway.