The LA Times Finds Out Product Placement Isn't the Magic Bullet?

It's one thing being marched to the gallows by an uncaring and unappreciative public, sentenced by shifting technological and cultural habits and a few bonehead moves of your own. But it's quite another having to go to your death stripped naked as a jaybird.

Insult to injury, as another cliche goes.

That seems to be how a sizable number of L.A. Times journalists feel about a front page NBC TV show ad lipsticked up to look like a real news feature story: it's bad enough that newspapers are (ad nauseum) arguably doomed, but don't steal our dignity while you're at it, they're saying.

At a minimum, 100-plus (out of about 700 total in the newsroom) signed a petition accusing the in-bankruptcy Times management of a sin which "blurs the line between paid content and content that our reporters are producing."

Wait. I thought we desperately want someone -- almost anyone -- to actually pay for the content the newsrooms are producing (just don't put your dirty hand print all over the thing.) And in a climate where newspaper companies are rolling the existential dice, commenters on this story at several sites call the Times journalists "whiners."

Inside the newsroom mindset, though, the ad "has caused incalculable damage to this institution", the petition reads, and "makes a mockery of our integrity and journalistic standards." In language that might not otherwise make it into the paper, the petitioners accuse their publisher of "whor(ing) out the front page."

Someone should tell the Times that even the prostitution business is in a recession; Nevada just killed a proposed $5 tax on sex acts.

Since even the pimp has already been paid here, the protest can only "strenuously" object but seeks no particular redress. It seems a little like a formal, colonial-era glove slap with the Times' owners (Sam Zell and the banks) owning the only dueling pistol.

It was just nine years ago that the paper's Staples Center scandal, also considered an egregious advertising/editorial breach, drove out the top executives at the time and resulted in reams of published soul-searching. And it wasn't that long ago in our history when hard-line purists argued that even a real feature story didn't belong on Page One. But all that successful moral indignation, in the current world, feels a universe away.

In the last few years, the sacred wall concept has been shrinking pretty fast. New standards are a moving target.

The Wall Street Journal had a front page ad every day even before Rupert Murdoch bought it. As an editor, I said OK to watermark-style product pitches embedded in sports statistics and stock listings. So did a lot of my colleagues. Ads started bending inward, over and around news stories.

Stephen Colbert, who I now feel I can call Stephen, may have shown us the next red light sale when he suggested last week that we just go straight to product placement in newspapers.

That won't make the angry journalists, journalism ethicists, journalism academics or even some sub set of citizens who believe in the more traditional approach feel any better. Especially if they have to go out on stories wearing Pepsi t-shirts and a new set of Nikes.

But there is some good news at week's end for the uncorrupted.

According to New York magazine, fully five percent of New Yorkers support higher taxes to save the New York Times.

And Fox news chief Roger Ailes just bought an upstate New York newspaper for his wife. If we could just get more really rich guys (or gals) to similarly gift their spouses, we might be on to something.

Finally, if all else fails, we can go holding our noses into a thriving spin-off of newspapering: the Journalist-Consultant. Business Week columnist Jon Fine writes that companies like Abrams Research, run by former MSNBC anchor Dan Abrams, are among a growing number of firms hiring journalists to work directly for the companies whose ads are causing this commotion.

Nation! Let's cut out the middle man.

Follow Phil Bronstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PhilBronstein

Comments

[Aramarcal]

I think your idea on asking AOL, Yahoo and MSN etc...to pay for the newspaper content that they use is the way to go. I get my local news from Yahoo so no longer get my local paper. These companies get money from advertisers using the content from the country's papers and they don't compensate you guys properly.

[traveller77]

The LA Times is a zombie newspaper.

In newspapers as in banks, autos and high-tech; the old "disinterested owner" business model has failed.

If the Times want to survive, they'll have to turn over the paper to the Journalists they've fired over the years; the ones who are now running local blogs.

tt77

[raker]

Calling it product placement is far too kind. Ads made up to look like news are something else far worse. NBC News does it all the time, making a "news story" out of an advertiser's press release. But the idea of real product placement strikes me as kind of funny. "The President spoke to reporters today over a cold, refreshing Coke, and explained why his foreign policy is the real thing." or "It's like putting Revlon Moisturizing Lipstick on a Hormel pig." Imagine the possibilities.

[Mavin1620]

You're too hard on them. They simple don't know right from wrong. Many missteps like this are caused by being too insular.

[DeidreW]

I understand blaming the newspaper for running the ad but it's pretty hard to say no to money when you need it to survive and keep your employees. The requests for advertorial don't come from the newspapers they come from the advertisers who believe that an actual ad won't be effective and that they need something that looks more like content in order to sell the product. Over the years the lines between content and advertising have gotten increasingly blurred. Especially on the web where some sort of response can be measured in clicks advertisers have come to believe that their ads, no matter how eyecatching or even intrusive, won't sell their product alone. A good ad campaign shouldn't need the trick of looking like editorial content.

[jd2408]

I remember a time when my hometown paper printed the news as accurately and matter of fact as they possibly could. No hidden agenda or prejudice. There were sections of the paper for columnists to give thoughtful opinion with educated insight. Investigative reporting that was based on fact seem to make you feel safer and thankful that there was a free press to keep an eye on things. It isn't that way anymore. Owners and editors of newspapers control and manipulate content to fit their own agenda. Our little hometown paper is on the brink of closing down. I think this is not the fault of the internet but brought on by themselves.

[JScott]

It all seems a little too late for all of this, LAT was goin downhill before all of this.
Notice on Sunday that 1/2 of the paper is all add inserts aka stuff I don't read anyway.

[RofWH]

The Sunday LA Times was always half ads. But now, with so many sections discontinued it is more than half. And a few of the sections that are there (Parade (yuck) and Image (double yuck)) are truly contentless. I love newspapers. I am sorry to see them going away. I hate the thought of morning coffee without the sports page and the headline section, with or without ads.

[votingthistime]

I am not familiar with the specific problems of the L.A.Times, but in general, I'm sure the powers-that-be wish there were fewer newspapers so there would be fewer eyes to report their misdeeds. Surely the police, when beating up someone for no apparent reason, wish there were fewer cellphones with cameras. Certainly there exists a business model, probably involving the Internet, which would solve the financial problems of newspapers. There is nothing inevitable about their demise, and it is in the interest of a well-informed citizentry for investigative reporting to be a viable profession.

[PaceSetter]

I called the Times and finally stopped my subscription.

Yesterday I didn't even unwrap the plastic from the thin shadow of a newspaper when I saw the NBC advertisement stretched across the front page. I dumped it straight into the blue recycling bin, came in and made the phone call I'd been threatening for months to make.

I told the poor call-center drone why I was quitting them. He didn't seem at all surprised. In fact, he made it seem as if he's been fielding calls like mine all morning. He even told me the reporters were saying similar things. He promised to pass my message on to editorial. I guess they might have gotten the message.

[Paul]

They should have run it on April 1.

That way they could say it was all a joke.

[Paul Peete - Huffpost Blogger]

Is it just me or do I see Advertisement on the second line of the article? I'm kinda perplexed about this!

[Chris Lisee]

Remember on February 17, 2009 when Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz posted "Staying Real in an Instant," an advertorial about introducing instant coffee to Starbucks' lineup?

I do. It was above the fold, first article in the left-hand column. Right where this one, a legitimate news story, is. Perhaps Starbucks didn't pay for the ad, but there were more legitimate items to put there.

Newspapers aren't the only ones who sell out.

[ZeMongoose]

Regretably, disguising advertising as content has become all too common. I'm glad the HuffPo doesn't feel the need to sink to such tactics.

[VinceTeeter]

Uh newspaper?? is that something that you print with a typewriter and then deliver with a bicycle? My junk mail suffices for my fire starter and papers the bottom of my bird cage. Why would I ever want a newspaper?

[dharmawire]

Come on, the Times' parent company is in bankruptcy. Let 'em make a little money while they "reorganiz­e." Sounds like the petitioners are mourning the loss of a paper that died before the Staples scandal.

[RofWH]

And the ad was for a new NBC TV show that really was a stinker.