williamlobdell.com

Look, I’m a realist. I’ve never had a problem with placing ads on the front pages of newspapers. I never bothered me to have the front section of a newspaper wrapped in a clearly marked advertising piece (called a spadea in the biz). But what happened last week in the Los Angeles Times was so cheesy, amateurish and belittling to a once-grand newspaper that it’s almost beyond comprehension.

The publisher and advertising department decided to run a fake (and horribly written) news story on the front page of the paper (promoting a new TV series and attach it to an ad across the bottom of the page). The whole awkward mess was then fenced off from the legitimate A1 news by a huge, L-shaped border.

Here’s the most amazing thing. No editor resigned in protest. Not Editor Russ Stanton (a good guy in a horrible situation) or anyone else on the masthead. The leadership of the editorial department rolled over with barely a whimper.

In the end, it won’t really matter that The Times ran a hideous, L-shaped, front-page ad in its waning days. Nothing will fix the broken newspaper model. But as the time grows nigh, that doesn’t mean principled journalists need to cave into bizarre and unjournalistically sound schemes imposed by the advertising department that will haste the paper’s demise.

At some point — like when a fake news story appears on your front page — the proper move (the only move, really)  is to resign.

*Reader Paul suggested a better headline: What Would Otis Chandler Do?