Charles Apple

The Los Angeles Times today ran a huge promotion for the movie Despicable Me on the front page of its calendar section today:

Now, this one doesn’t strike me nearly as bad as did the big Universal Studios Tour ad from last week. Mostly because a) it’s clear right away that this is an advertisement, and b) it’s not hard news the ad is mimicking.

But it’s still awfully obtrusive. The ad leaves precious little room on the front for editorial copy, points out Kevin Roderick of LA Observed.

And then, after another full-page ad for Despicable Me, the review of the movie itself runs, Roderick reports:

While the ad screams that it’s “this year’s coolest animated comedy!,”[Kenneth Turan]  says otherwise: “a 3-D animated feature so saccharine that sappy sentimentality is more of a danger than exposure to evil.” Funny, his second paragraph makes reference to an “exercise in false advertising,” and he doesn’t mean what the LAT ad department did to the Calendar section today.

Read it in LA Observed.

Read up here on last week’s advertising misstep by the L.A. Times.

Thanks to Bob Beamesderfer for the tip!

The Los Angeles Times today reports:

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Thursday called on the Los Angeles Times to stop selling advertising sections designed to resemble news sections, saying that the ads hurt the paper’s credibility.

Read the LAT story here.

Kevin Roderick of LA Observered has posted the official letter from the board of supervisors here. He writes:

It’s pretty bad when the Supervisors, who are usually the ones shirking their duty, feel the need to lecture the Times about its duty.

Find our coverage here of the latest controversial ad, which appeared in Thursday’s paper.

Poynter’s Jim Romenesko posted this today.

…In more ways than one. Heh.

Readers of the Los Angeles Times are surely being jolted awake this morning as they pick up their morning newspapers and peer through bloodshot eyes at this mother:

Universal Studios partially destroyed? Buildings and parked cars in ruins? Egads! Here’s the lead story:

Massive damage to theme park. Wow. Whatever happened was a complete disaster.

Odd, though, that there is no mention of injuries or fatalities. Especially since the photos suggest this happened early enough for photos to be taken in broad daylight.

Is it surprising the story’s not on page one? Perhaps. On the other hand, the LATExtra section is devoted to “late-breaking news.” (Read more about that here and here.)

Our only real clue that something is amiss is this tiny red label, just below the nameplate:

Yep. This is a four-page wrap in which advertising copy is masquerading as news — once again — in the once-respectable Los Angeles Times.

It’s not until you turn the page that you find the real LATExtra section tucked inside:

Meanwhile, the carnage continues on pages two and three of the wrap:

By the way, yes, you can click any of these pages for a closer view. However, these are photos, not PDFs, so they’ll only be so sharp.

Here’s a closeup of that story from the top left:

My anonymous tipster writes:

I should also note that even though LATExtra is slugged AA section — meaning it should be inside the front page — because of production constraints (mainly, printing the Wall Street Journal), it is often wrapped around the paper for home subscribers, as it was today.

Wrapped. Around. The paper. As in it’s the first damned thing you see when you pick up your morning delivery.

My tipster writes:

If you want, you can quote me as a longtime L.A. Times reader who canceled his subscription. Unbelievable, even for these smucks.

The Thai-sounding foreigner who canceled my subscription [over the phone] didn’t even put up a fight.

It’s only when you get to the back page, of course, that you reach the reason for the advertising wrap:

I just don’t know, folks. We’re relaxing our high ethical standards for a freakin’ amusement park ride?

The Times, of course, has a history of doing this kind of  stuff. In April 2009, it ran an ad disguised as news on page one. Earlier this year, the Times ran a wrap containing a large movie ad, designed to look as if it were overlapping live news copy (It wasn’t live news copy. but it was designed to make you think it was some kind of internet-like pop-up ad.)

Last year, the Daily Bruin of UCLA wrapped its paper with an ad designed to look like its regular news front.

Earlier this year, two Gatehouse Media papers ran advertorials on A1. The one in Rockford, Ill., was more like a skybox, so it didn’t bother me as much. The one in the State Journal Register of Springfield did, however.

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UPDATE, 1:47 P.M.

Copy-editing guru Andy Bechtel of the University of North Carolina writes:

This is a sad moment for the Los Angeles Times, a paper I’ve worked for and still respect. I understand the difficult decisions that newspapers must make to make money. Yet, if the LAT and other newspapers continue to do this sort of thing, they risk not only damaging their integrity, but destroying it.

Read Andy’s blog post here.

Kevin Roderick of LA Observed observes:

It all brings to mind the editors’ expressed desire to “own Hollywood coverage”…or is it the other way around?

Find his take on it here.