Page-one ad encroachment takes another bold leap today in Los Angeles
Page-one advertising — unthinkable just a few short months ago but now standard in many newspapers — took another huge leap this morning on the cover of today’s Los Angeles Times.
Check it out:
Yep: That’s an L-shaped ad for the premiere of a new NBC television series. A thick border surrounds both the display and and the faux editorial content, making it clear both belong together.
Kevin Roderick of LAObserved reports:
What would pass for an acceptable design was negotiated, and I’m told by a trades source that NBC was surprised how far the Times was willing to go in selling its main news cover. At least some LAT sources thought yesterday that Hartenstein had caved to internal objections from editors, but it appears not.
To the Times‘ credit, the ad is clearly labeled as “Advertisement” — under the NBC logo but above the headline — and the copy is set in a sans-serif font that contrasts with the Times‘ usual serif body font.
A closer look at the bottom left of that page reveals something interesting. What’s that in the upper right corner of the vertical part of the ad, between the NBC logo and the “Citizens” headline?:
It looks like sloppy X-Acto work with the four-point border tape. Except we suspect neither X-Actos nor border tape have been used at the LAT for a decade or more.
Variety’s Michael Schneider reports:
“We thought it was an interesting, provocative, breakthrough idea,” said NBC Entertainment marketing prexy Adam Stotsky. “Treating a fictional story in an editorial context for Angelenos inside the L.A. Times connected to our show.”
Stotsky said he knew that the L.A. Times would take some heat for the ad - and said both the network and newspaper took pains to “walk a fine line.”
“The L.A. Times has to strike a balance between creating innovative solutions for marketers and the editorial integrity of the product,” he said. “I’m sure this concept was developed not without a fair amount of discussion and debate internally. But we’ve delineated it clearly enough to signal it to the reader that it’s an ad.”
Schneider also writes of a bonus for NBC: Folks all over town will buzz about this ad, very unusual for the LAT, which will result in a “viral effect.”
So what do you think? Are huge, L-shaped ads a necessary evil to keep us from laying off even more journalists? Or is this another sign of the apocalypse?
Find the Variety story here. Find the LAObserved story here. Find another story in TVWeek, here.
Download a PDF of today’s LAT front here.
April 9th, 2009 at 10:31 am
The real news here is that there is an advertisement in the paper at all. Time to get real, people. It’s survival time. Some niceties of days gone by are going to fall by the wayside. Time to move on from mourning what are now relatively petty concerns. Maybe it’s ugly, but it’s an ad that is helping pay salaries and keep newsrooms in business. And after all the editorial damage Tribune Co. has done to the Times, the Sun, the Courant, the Sentinel and even its own hometown Tribune, on the scale of what’s truly ugly, this pales in comparison.
April 9th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Mother of dog.
Here, let me put a Post-it ad over that for you.
April 9th, 2009 at 11:00 am
It wouldn’t be quite as bad if it was just a display ad. But an advertorial? Those things are always hideously designed. The size of those indents! The text runs right up next to the rule! My poor eyes!
April 9th, 2009 at 11:04 am
If there’s no such thing as bad publicity, then LAT and NBC are getting their money’s worth out of this stinker.
April 9th, 2009 at 11:19 am
I don’t think the Southland ad looks bad at all—it is obviously an ad, so not deceptive, and I don’t mind some advertising splashed on the front page if it helps keep the paper going.
April 9th, 2009 at 11:43 am
I hope that ad made them a ton of cash and saves a few jobs. I hope they get a huge backlash for that advertisement from whats left of their subscribers and readers.
April 9th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
As I said this morning by e-mail: Otis Chandler is spinning in his grave. I heard this would be a one-column by 21-inch ad in column six, but they talked the bosses down from that. But still, it’s the LAT! Hopefully, this doesn’t catch on like furloughs.
April 9th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
fugly. hope it saved a job.
April 9th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Ads on the front have become a necessary evil. That said, I think the L-shaped advertorial takes it a bit too far. I agree that the ad is terrible to look at - the indents, the lack of white space, ugh. I like my ads to look like ads, not newspaper copy.
April 9th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
The real question is how much did the LAT get paid to run that? Doesn’t anyone know?
April 9th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
The death of print newspapers has been pretty much a given for more than two decades - long before the Internet really took hold. The advent of the Internet simply showed how it would happen.
Imagine if all of these (recently) dead and dying papers had, a decade ago, embraced the technology that is now, finally, destroying them. Imagine if they’d stopped publishing print editions, and devoted their resources and creativity toward retraining, toward investing in technologies to bring information to new and existing readers, to building new ways to communicate.
How many jobs would have been saved? This death of a thousand, million cut would have been avoided. This institution would have led us into a new era of information gathering, instead of closing the door on itself and being left behind.
Maybe, at one point, I would have seen this latest example of this phenomenon as tragic. But I’m past that. It is simply pathetic and self-inflicted. Let the LA Times die. Let the Boston Globe die. Let them be replaced by information sources with the vision to be unafraid, to find ways to reach their readers, to find ways to profit without embarrassing themselves.
April 9th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Front page ads as top, or more commonly bottom banners were used extensively in newspapers in the past. “Advertorial’ on A1 is a sheep of an entirely different plaid, however.
April 9th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
It may be a necessary evil, but talk about awful execution. The Times layout staff should be angrier than editorial. But three cheers for 4-pt tape, old school.
April 9th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I have less problem with the concept of front page advertising than I have with the absolutely hideous 4pt border. I think it would have been clear enough with the NBC advertisement header and a separating line of more normal width.
Do what you have to do to survive, but at least maintain some degree of elegance in the execution.
April 9th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
The LAT news sections paginated in 2002, using CCI. No border tape was harmed in the execution of this hideous looking layout. At one point, the ad was supposed to run full depth of Col. 6!
April 9th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
That ad definitely could have been executed A LOT better. Shame on the ad designers. Oh wait, the good ones have probably been fired.
April 9th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Ads were commonplace on front pages once upon a time. I can’t see a dif now. Use the space ya got for news and let the commerce dudes have their shot at consumers. We’re way beyond having any way to challenge this. With ads all over web pages, an ad on newsprint isn’t that big a deal…these days.
April 10th, 2009 at 1:08 am
The thing that really peeves me is this:
“We thought it was an interesting, provocative, breakthrough idea,†said NBC Entertainment marketing prexy Adam Stotsky. “Treating a fictional story in an editorial context for Angelenos inside the L.A. Times connected to our show.â€
Mr Stotsky clearly doesn’t know squat about the history of advertising. This concept was highly popular for about 80 years from the mid 1800s until the 1960s. I can find millions of issues of newspapers in news libraries across the nation with this form of advertorial (fiction as editorial). Just go look at the car ads in ’50s diners.
That said, I think it’s a good idea, just gotta know your history and not take credit for something you found in the attic. I just wish their designer knew something about typography, those indents are the default tab spacing on InDesign. C’mon you gotta massage the numbers and try really hard not to use Arial.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:17 am
A send-up from NotTheLATimes.com:
http://notthelatimes.com/frontpageads.html
April 10th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Those who complain about newspapers not embracing new technology are unaware of, or choose to ignore, the millions spent by newspaper companies starting more than 25 years ago. Knight Ridder? Some $25 million on a Videotex project in Florida. Gannett? A fully staffed online newsroom fed “micro computer” users. Small groups also paid their dues. Privately held companies, like Kansas’ Harris Enterprises, spent a million bucks on an R&D project in 1982-83. I know. I helped run it.
Newspaper were pioneers in online news distribution. The problem is readers. They are not prepared to give up their print editions, so companies must maintain both print and online products in the face of shrinking revenue.
Oh, yeah. Back to the topic. The ad sucks. It would never be allowed in the small-town newspaper I publish. We do allow 2 x 4 ads on the bottom right corner. I have to approve each one. It hurts.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:19 am
What is it about the word “advertisement” at the top of the text that is escaping people? Or the different, non-editorial fonts? Tempest in a teapot, folks. Newspapers gotta eat.
April 10th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
So …here’s the thing. While I can see all of the objections to the Los Angeles Times “selling out ” by doing something like this, I can also understand THAT - in this suffering economy - businesses have to do what they need to do. It is clearly an AD, and all of these objecting people need to take a step back…and think about what the newspaper needed to do, for continuing survival.
I think most of this is “much ado about nothing”, and by the way - the new NBC show was good, and I think the network needed to do something to get the attention of jaded TV watchers in Southern California. GUESS WHAT ? they got what they wanted…for NBC , worth every penny it spent on this AD.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
The worst part about this “ad” is the crappy story! Can’t these PR people do better? That’s one of the worst “newspaper stories” I’ve ever read! Or tried to read. It didn’t make any sense. If I were NBC, I’d demand my money back from my PR folks.