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!

Here’s the cover of the new issue of the Economist magazine:

OK, very good. Very good indeed. The photo is credited to Larry Downing of Reuters.

So why post it here? Because here’s that cover again, side-by-side with the original photo:

Not good. This is lazy design and lazy editing. Not to mention lazy ethics.

Jeremy Peters, the Media Decoder blogger for the New York Times, is all over this today. He writes:

When it comes to its own photographers, Reuters has stringent standards regarding photo editing. “Reuters has a strict policy against modifying, removing, adding to or altering any of its photographs without first obtaining the permission of Reuters and, where necessary, the third parties referred to,” Thomson Reuters said in a statement on Sunday.

Editors from The Economist had no comment when asked on Friday about the cover image.

Read it here.

Thanks to Greg Mitchell for blogging this today.

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.