At a time when most newspaper readers seek more front-page news, the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday turned over a chunk of its opening page to The Walt Disney Co. for a sprawling movie ad that included space where normally a top headline is placed, notes Grumpy Editor.
In the process, only three news stories appeared on the front page. Usually four to six reports run on its opening page. (This compared with 15 to 18 opening-page stories when The Times, with greater competition from five other dailies in the city, produced “newsy” front --- and larger --- pages with eight columns.)
The Disney ad, in white letters against a blue background, stretched across the top of the page, down the left side at almost a column width and full-width across the bottom in continuing the message.
“In the past, The Times has sold movie tie-in wraps around the front page, done fake front pages that cause controversy or sold a chunk of the page for advertising,” Kevin Roderick wrote on his LA Observed website. “This is the first time I remember The Times (or any other top U.S. newspaper) dropping half of the content on its actual front page for an ad --- in this case for an advertiser the paper regularly covers and a movie it will also cover.”
Roderick, who labeled it a “garishly unattractive Disney movie ad,” added that in The Times newsroom “there is a growing sense that the editors and publisher no longer care much about the printed paper, feeling that the future is digital.”
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Quiz time: What was the most overused word (especially in advertisements and broadcast coverage) since last Wednesday? See answer below.
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NEW MEANING FOR THE MILE-HIGH CITY. The Denver Post appointed Ricardo Baca as the editor overseeing coverage of the recreational marijuana law that takes effect next month. Baca, with the Post for nearly 12 years, was entertainment editor and music critic at the paper.
ON TOP OF THE NEWS. Some Bloomberg Businessweek subscribers still have not received the much-heralded 212-page Nov. 18 issue, its largest since 1999. Missing that issue, callers to its subscription service were told to hold off until Nov. 25, then, if the issue was still missing, to request a copy. Those who did call again were informed to expect the slow-to-receive issue in two to four more weeks --- in time for Christmas.
Quiz time answer: Doorbusters.
One of the funniest lines of the week from Jan Leno’s monologue on NBC’s The Tonight Show:
Obama told Iran “if you like your uranium, you can keep your uranium.”
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