Battles Rage over Newspaper, Magazine Cover Ads

The flap about NBC’s recent front-page Los Angeles Times ad, designed to look like a news article, continued today as the paper’s executive editor called the ad “horrible” and “a mistake.”

Executive editor John Arthur, who was away on vacation last week, says he was blindsided by the ad, according to The Wrap. Arthur says he had heard the ad was coming - and had complained about it - but was told it wouldn’t happen until May or June.

The ad on the front page of the LA Times was shaped like an L; the vertical arm of the L was designed to look like a news column, though it was labeled as an advertisement, while the horizontal arm was an ad for NBC’s new show titled Southland.

Arthur also complained about a four-page advertising supplement for a Paramount film that was published yesterday (Sunday). The supplement was published under the Los Angeles Times banner, and the font used for the title of the film, The Soloist, was “uncomfortably close” to the font used on LA Times section fronts, Arthur said.

While Russ Stanton, editor of the LA Times, approved both ads, Arthur was not alone in his condemnation of the advertising units. Complaints prompted publisher Eddy Hartenstein to tell an angry newsroom, “I’m just trying to keep the lights on here, folks.” He added that he could not promise another front-page ad like the Southland one - which reportedly brought in six figures - would not happen again.

Newspapers are facing unprecedented challenges - media ad spend on newspapers is predicted by Veronis Suhler Stevenson to fall 16.2% in 2009 - and in order to survive, some are calling on ad formats which formerly would have been seen as unacceptable breaches of the advertising-editorial wall. When newspapers first began reviving front-page ads in the last few years (decades ago, front page ads were not uncommon), editors and journalists balked, claiming they devalued the editorial product. Since then, publishers and ad departments have been pushing the envelope on the ads in the hopes of keeping papers alive.

Magazines face the same challenges, and similar confrontations are taking place. The American Society of Magazine Editors last week voiced disapproval of magazines that are increasingly integrating advertising into their covers.

ASME singled out Entertainment Weekly and ESPN the Magazine for breach of the association’s guidelines, writes MediaPost. The April 6 issue of ESPN included a fold-out flap over half the cover, with the words, “You wouldn’t settle for an incomplete cover.” When the flap was folded back, readers found an ad for Powerade. Entertainment Weekly’s April 3 cover was a pocket that included a pull-out ad for the ABC show The Unusuals.

ASME said ad placements did nothing to improve editorial content and only distracted readers. But magazines may be unlikely to heed ASME’s warnings - the association has no power to enforce its restrictions because it isn’t a governing body - faced as they are with plummeting ad pages. Entertainment Weekly, for example, has seen ad pages fall 39.2% through late March.

Through April, monthly consumer mag ad pages have tanked 22% from the first four months of 2008, according to MIN Online.