April
12
LAT Advertorial Controversy; State of Play Romances Journalism
We all know that newspapers are on the ropes. But selling their souls to the Devil is not the solution. Thursday's LAT front-page "NBC Advertisement," with no byline, about the new show Southland, looked creepy and wrong. Then on Sunday April 12, the newspaper's publishing side went full hog with a four-page insert written by "special advertising section writers" on The Soloist. The LAT pitched these stories to NBC and Paramount, reports the NYT. The Soloist is based on the relationship between LAT columnist Steve Lopez and homeless musician Nathaniel Ayers. Clearly marked as an advertorial, the insert looked like a newspaper and read like a paid advertisement. This follows the 1999 Staples scandal, when the LAT published a weekend magazine special issue about the Staples Center and split ad revenue with the new venue. In March 2007, a section of the LAT guest-edited by producer Brian Grazer was scrapped after editorial page editor Andres Martinez resigned; it was revealed that his girlfriend had been working for a PR firm.
Clearly, the LAT ad sales side ignored the protests of the editorial side. Lopez himself cooperated with a Q & A within the advertorial. Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to run a story inside the Calendar section? Surely readers would take it more seriously? They must know the difference. This is so wrong. A clear separation between ad sales and editorial is essential to any serious journalistic enterprise.
The LAT is not alone in blurring these lines. Two Time Warner mags, Entertainment Weekly (3/27/09) and Time (3/30/09), entered into an agreement with Intel and HP, which ran ads promoting their products and DreamWorks' Monsters & Aliens alongside deep features on the state of 3-D. Neither story was labled as an advertorial; both were written by staffers. Clearly both mags assigned pieces that were designed to accompany related ad buys. Is this OK?
Meanwhile, Universal is releasing a movie, State of Play, that showcases, much like the classic All the Presidents Men, why journalism is important to a functioning society, revealing some of the pressures and duress that newspapers face these days.
Updated and Americanized by director Kevin Macdonald and writers Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray from a 2003 BBC mini-series, the film tracks two reporters for the Washington Globe, a grizzled veteran (Russell Crowe) and an upstart blogger (Rachel McAdams) who are tracking down a story about a rising Congressman (Ben Affleck) after his affair with a staffer is revealed when she is murdered. The Congressman turns to his old college buddy, the reporter. Doing the right thing, in this case, is murky indeed. At the film's end, as the Globe story finally goes to press, it's hard not to feel a lump of concern about the state of our nation without newspapers.
State of Play opens April 17. Here's a NYT feature..
I've been hanging on to my morning coffee LAT habit, even as I recognize that the economic model of printing on newsprint and delivering papers to peoples' homes is hopelessly out of date and ecologically incorrect. Like everyone else, I do most of my reading online, and find myself questioning what I pay for the weeklies Time and Entertainment Weekly, which often seem thin and redundant. Even when they offer excellent in-depth reporting and context, many of the non-review pieces seem familiar and pre-digested. The New Yorker offers more original content, finally, and seems worth its pricey subscription, and New York Magazine is topical, visual and sharp--and boasts a website crammed with entertaining fast-read content.
The monthlies, on the other hand, seem well worth their relative low cost. I'm enjoying Wired, More, Los Angeles Magazine, even Vanity Fair.
Whatever it takes to survive these tough times, selling out journalistic integrity is not worth the sacrifice.
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Good for you. Thanks
Posted by: RGM | April 12, 2009 at 04:11 PM
Wow, that's just lame.. if i'm reading the news, I want to read the news! I don't want to be fed advertisements. Pathetic.
Posted by: Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! | April 12, 2009 at 05:07 PM
Anne, very balanced attack of what is at heart wrong with advertorials. I had a similar reaction to the L.A. Times junk that you did (Devil, etc.) but appreciate the clear headed and insightful way in which you articulate why this is BAD!
Posted by: Joe Valdez | April 12, 2009 at 09:22 PM
Your indignation and distain is HILARIOUS. Variety routinely publishes false covers with the Variety logo at there top for ads. No credible news organizations participate in such low deception and you point your finger at a clearly marked advertorial??? Or how about the Charlie Chaplin, James Dean or Harold Lloyd sections from a few years back with the same fonts and Variety logo? The only reason you haven't had any of late is your paper is in the dumps and hanging on by a thread. Hypocrite.
Posted by: Oh, Really? | April 13, 2009 at 03:48 PM
I was not pleased by the "Southland" piece, especially its placement on the front page. But how, exactly, is the "Soloist" standalone section of the LA Times any different from the Variety "Special Reports" sections that have run for years?
For instance, Variety's "Rachel Ray 500 Episodes," "Pyramedia 10th Anniversary," "Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall," "ER Series Finale," "Mama Mia 10th Anniversary" - were those not cooked up and pitched to the various "featured" entities in an effort to drum up advertising in Variety?
Again, the "Southland" piece crossed the line, no doubt, but a front page wrap is vastly different from a standalone feature piece such as the one they ran for the "Soloist" using a method Variety has been making bank with for years.
Kudos to the LA Times for doing the "Soloist" section and creating a revenue stream it would otherwise not have -- and, for taking a page out of the Variety playbook to do it.
Posted by: GMaher | April 13, 2009 at 03:52 PM
I would argue that a daily newspaper is not the same as a trade publication, finally.
Posted by: anne Thompson | April 13, 2009 at 04:18 PM