This is probably just a coincidence — in fact, I can’t come up with a logical explanation for it being anything else — but I thought I’d share it.
Speaking of the WSJ — on the bottom of the page on an inside section front (section B, the “Marketplace” section), I found the story about the conclusion of the Cadbury saga — Kraft won in the end. And it struck me that it was very odd that this story was being played so far back in the paper — and at the bottom of the page, no less!
For months, tiny turns of the screw in this story had merited front-page play — often making the very top of the front page. And now, when we finally learn what happens in the end, it’s relegated to the bottom of an inside section front? This made no sense. I pondered whether the previous day had been the big day and I just missed it, or ignored it, making this an anticlimax … but it still seemed odd.
As I was thinking about it, my eye happened to drift over to the right, and there, in the bottom-right corner, was a Sprint ad with the headline “App Candy.” Mind you, I’m so accustomed to these ads now being on section fronts the last few years that they are white noise to me; I normally don’t see them at all. But because this one had “candy” in the hed, and I was pondering a story about that subject, it jumped out at me.
And the thought flashed through my mind, was the story downplayed like this so it could be played next to this ad?
No freaking way. First of all, I’ve never worked at a paper where there was even a mechanism or a procedure that would have allowed anyone to coordinate such an alignment. And this suggested collusion all the way back to the copy writer at Sprint’s ad agency, which is extremely unlikely even if, under Rupert Murdoch (who finally paid me, by the way, just not as much as I wanted) the editors were willing to do something so unethical as to downplay a big business news story in order to pull such a silly stunt.
And what would have been accomplished, really — other than to make people go “huh!,” then quickly forget about it. I only remembered because I’m a longtime newspaper editor. An increasingly paranoid one, at that, seeing conspiracies in strange places…
Sorry about the quality of that photo of the page. I shot it with my phone (NOT a Sprint phone, by the way) under poor lighting conditions.
Google has figured out a way of placing context ads on print media?
Clever, ain’t they?
Magazines do it all the time–why not newspapers?–as you point out, it’s all done by computer now.
Yeah, I’m just trying to imagine the ad rep having the chutzpah to try to inject this idea into the daily news meeting.
A friend of mine from the o-o-o-old days — Les Seago, in point of fact, the man who told the world that Elvis died — said when he worked at the paper in Little Rock (I’m thinking the 50s or 60s), the city editor or someone like that kept a gun in his desk. When Les asked him why, he said it was there in case anybody from advertising ever tried to enter the newsroom.
The world has changed a lot since then, and not all for the better. The folks in HR at most newspapers would have a hissy-fit if anyone even JOKED about keeping a gun, or a bottle of whiskey (to cite something far more common in the old days), in his desk. And senior editors and the top people in advertising even socialize on occasion. And it’s somewhat more likely that an ad rep could enter a newsroom without coming to bodily harm. But I still find it hard to believe that this particular juxtaposition could have been intentional.
Brad, are you going to read the Wall Street Journal to us everyday?
I doubt there are many sales reps afraid of “bodily harm” from a room full of journalists… you can only be sissy slapped so hard.
As opposed to airline ads vanishing when a crash happens!
I TAKE IT ALL BACK, I’M A COMPLETE IDIOT!
My wife just told me it was on the front page yesterday — this is the followup story.
Doh!