Why Those L.A. Times Ads Will Hurt Its Bottom Line

The internal war that erupted this week at the Los Angeles Times broke down along all-too familiar lines. Publisher Eddy Hartenstein, defending his decision to run ads for an NBC show and an upcoming Paramount film that had been designed to look like news stories, claimed that harsh business realities had forced his hand. Hartenstein reportedly told an angry newsroom: "I'm just trying to keep the lights on here, folks." Journalists, both at the paper and at large, contended that the editorial integrity of the paper had been damaged. "It's unwise and ethically problematic to have advertising morph into news content and style," said Bob Steele, a journalism values scholar at the Poynter Institute.

Of course, talking about ethics and integrity and other high-minded concepts is a surefire way to make ad sales folks roll their eyes and dismiss you as a pointy-minded idealist. No, to sway publishing executives you have to convince them the line that's suffering real damage isn't the sacred (at least to editors) one between church and state, it's the one that's near and dear to their blessedly capitalistic hearts: the bottom line.

Some years ago I was working for a national monthly when I got a call from the magazine's publisher. She was livid over a profile I had assigned and edited in which an outspoken celebrity trashed a number of American corporations, most notably one of the Big Three automakers. After lecturing me on the nature of advertiser relations, she killed the piece. (At this media company, the publisher had the authority to do that.) Then to rationalize her decision, she hit me with this analogy:

"Pretend we're running a candy store," said the publisher, a hard-charging exec who had made her bones in ad sales. "We have to make sure we're giving our customers the best possible candy we can make. If they start getting bad treats, they're not going to come back to our store. I mean, would you?"

To her credit, her metaphor, though simplistic, pretty succinctly summed up her worldview of the industry. And over the years, I've come to realize that many in publishing see the business in the same terms. I'm sure Hartenstein saw the boundary-pushing ads in the Times as simply another way of giving the customer what they want.

But here's the problem with the analogy: Newspapers and magazines actually have two sets of customers, advertisers and readers, and the journalistic shopkeepers sell each client a distinctly different product. To the readers, they sell editorial content. To the advertisers, they sell readers. In other words, for the advertisers, the candy is the readership.

Again: For advertisers, the candy is the readership. NOT the editorial content. That is something publications create in order to build a loyal base of followers, which it can then deliver to an advertiser. So monkeying with a paper's bond with its audience in any way--as of last Friday, about 80 complaints had been registered with the Times over the ads--will ultimately lead to ad clients not getting what they want either. That's how you sour your candy.

Readers aren't stupid. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who actually thought that the NBC and Paramount ads were really reported pieces. Still, by intentionally blurring the line, the Times sent a clear signal that the next time around the deception may be subtler. Perhaps a negative reference to an advertiser will be edited out of a story. Or the mention of a product in a piece will be sponsored. All it takes is the perception by the readers that something hinky's at work behind the scenes. Because after all, as all those publishers and ad sales people will remind you, the customer's always right.

Comments

[larry278]

What happens to the corner candy store when both the convience store & the super market carry brand name candy? The convenience store never closes & their Mounds bars are 2 cents cheaper than the candy store's Mounds. BTW, the super market in now open 24/7 & their Mounds bars are 8 cents cheaper than the corner candy store's price. You see a lot of bikes in front of Krogers now. The 7-11 isn't doing bad with the bicycle set either.
The old corner candy store has been empty for a month & has a big for rent sign in the window.
Sam Zell owns the LAT, the Trib & other papers (many in 1 paper towns). Sam has put the Trib into bankruptcy. If Sam doesn't pay his leveraged loans, Trib papers, including the LAT, fold.

[Mickey7]

I think we can all understand why newspapers are dying. The corporatization of broadcast and print news essentially makes them obsolete. They no longer perform the function they were designed to perform--provide the public with information in a responsible and unbiased manner--so why should the public support them? I understand the fiscal dilemma that publishers find themselves in, but it is ironic that they see the very processes that drove them out of business (i.e. questionable relationships with sponsors and advertisers) as their salvation.

[NHBill]

Come on. "had been designed to look like news stories" I think the average reader of the LA Times knows an ad when they see one.

[TheProf]

Along with many of my friends, I have been on the edge of canceling my subscription to the L.A. Times, after thirty years of reading it every morning. It is sad to see a once great paper become nothing more than than paper flooring for the bottom of my friend's bird cage. What a tragedy. Soon I'm afraid we'll see it near the check-out counter at the local supermarket, beside the tabloids and headlines declaring that some new starlet is actually a Martian.

[JailNeoconVicts]

Well, for this customer, who had subscribed to the LA Times for almost thirty years, those ads were the last straw. It really saddened me to do so, but I canceled my subscription yesterday. It just isn't a worthwhile paper any more, let alone the world-class journal it used to be.