Creative use of advertising gets editors upset
Traditional limits on advertising have relaxed across the industry as newspapers struggle to cope with steep ad declines. In the last few years, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal all began publishing ads on the lower parts of their front pages. But The Los Angeles Times has gone several steps further. In April, it published a front-page ad for the TV series “Southland” that was made to look like a news article, prompting harsh criticism from media critics and its own journalists. Two months later, it published its first full front-page wrap-around ad, for the series “True Blood.”
The “Alice in Wonderland” ad, which also wraps around the paper, introduces a new wrinkle, lending the name and work of The Times to an advertiser. For that reason, some Times journalists said they found it more troubling than the previous ads. But in general, it drew a more muted reaction in the newsroom than the “Southland” ad did, and some of the people interviewed noted that the paper received several hundred thousand dollars for such an ad. “People are worried about what it does with the brand, the paper’s name,” said one reporter who, like his colleagues, insisted on anonymity to speak critically of his employer. “On the other hand, it’s money that we badly need.”
A very creative ad for a new movie
In case they hadn't noticed print advertising is
in trouble as the number of readers continue to
decline. This ad doesn't diminish the LA Times
brand it's a very creative way to advertise a new
movie. If, on the other hand, there was a fake
front page with an ad that was disguised to look
like a news story than that could be a problem.
This however was a great way to promote a new
movie.
Some journalists take themselves way too
seriously and don't understand that people go to
several news sources via the Web when it comes to
getting the news. As Pew Internet recently
stated;
In the
digital era, news has become omnipresent.
Americans access it in multiple formats on
multiple platforms on myriad devices. The days of
loyalty to a particular news organization on a
particular piece of technology in a particular
form are gone. The overwhelming majority of
Americans (92%) use multiple platforms to get
news on a typical day, including national TV,
local TV, the internet, local newspapers, radio,
and national newspapers. Some 46% of Americans
say they get news from four to six media
platforms on a typical day. Just 7% get their
news from a single media platform on a typical
day.
The internet is at the center of the story of how
people’s relationship to news is changing. Six in
ten Americans (59%) get news from a combination
of online and offline sources on a typical day,
and the internet is now the third most popular
news platform, behind local television news and
national television news.
Time for the people at the LA Times to stop
taking themselves so seriously.
