An ad, of all things, ran on the front page of yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. Can you imagine?
Actually, yes I can imagine. But old school journalists are inspecting this thing like it’s an alien ship hovering over Wilshire Blvd.
Here’s some copy from the The Wall Street Journal about the placement:
The one-column ad, for a new NBC cop show, simulated a news story or critic’s review. It had a headline and included a line about “this reporter” following along with police officers in a night that ends with a shooting. The 11th and last paragraph of the story then mentions the premiere of the new TV series, called “Southland.”
The item was labeled as an NBC advertisement, separated by a border and printed in a different typeface than the rest of the page. A traditional ad for the TV show ran next to it along the bottom of the page.
Standards are great. We need them. Yet, standards will bend like a reed on a windy day when one’s survival is in question. The Donner Party proved that.
