LA Times 'Southland' Ad Looks Really Cheesy

Front-page ads are an increasingly common fact of life as the embattled newspaper industry grasps for lifelines, but the main problem with the Los Angeles Times' ad for the new NBC drama "Southland" (as documented by my colleague Michael Schneider) is that the faux news story execution looks so absurdly cheesy and amateurish.

Why splash an ad on the front page for a classy, high-quality drama that half looks like one of those cut-rate products offering a cure for erectile dysfunction?

It's also interesting that the Times appears more willing to push the ad-editorial envelope than my old alma mater, UCLA, where students at the Daily Bruin publicly lamented their need to slap advertising on the front page. And that's a place where (assuming things haven't changed much since I was there) they barely pay most of the staff. If this keeps up, don't be surprised if USC breaks down and strikes the inevitable product-placement deal with a certain brand of condom.

Set in Los Angeles and focusing on the LAPD, "Southland" has an inordinately strong connection to L.A., so it might qualify as a kind of exception for the Times. Still, the Daily Bruin editorial summed up the discomfort that journalists tend to feel as such barriers keep falling amid our employers' increasingly desperate attempts to generate revenue, saying, "Our hope is that our readers will not dismiss us as the sell-outs we feel like."

Out of the mouths of (relative) babes.