The newspaper industry depends on advertising as well as subscriptions to cover the costs of operation. Whether you consider newspaper advertising a necessary evil or just necessary, any newspaper's revenue has to come from somewhere. But there's an important distinction between advertising's manipulative abuses and its physical abuses.
It's the latter that bother me. I've written about the problem before, "A Half-Page Newspaper Not Better Than None; Disintegrating Paper Contributing to Disintegrating Industry," September 20, 2010.
So what's the problem? That blog entry began:
It used to be a "half-page ad" in a newspaper meant a full page of newsprint, half of which (usually the bottom half) contained advertising matter.The Press-Citizen's physical abuse of its newspaper and its customers seemed to taper off a bit after that.
Today it has become, more literally, a half of a page of newsprint all of which is advertising.
A newspaper that falls apart in your hands is but one more bit of evidence of an industry that is disintegrating as well.
But this morning the problem has resumed.
Last September's analysis of the problem and its solutions won't be repeated here this morning. Nor will appeals to the Press-Citizen. That time (and opportunity for the paper) has passed. It's time to focus on those who pay for this journalistic carnage: the advertisers who use these "half-page" ads.
So this morning's blog is the first of a new effort to finger the offensive and abusive advertisers who are buying, and thereby sustaining, this offensive form of advertising. Given that no one has indicated to me anything other than hostility toward the paper and the advertisers who use these half-page, newspaper destructive techniques -- not even neutrality, let alone acceptance -- I can safely leave it to blog readers to decide what they want to do about these advertisers.
April 6, 2011
Stanley Steemer
Lenoch & Cilek/Ace
www.lebeda.com
Emma Goldman Clinic
(and, given even advertisers lack of interest in this abuse,)
Press-Citizen Media
(which was left no option but to buy most of the space from itself)
Let us hope this list will shrink, rather than expand, over time.
1 comment:
Notice Regarding Advertising: This blog runs an open comments section. All comments related to the content of blog entries have (so far) remained posted, regardless of how critical. Although I would prefer that those posting comments identify themselves, anonymous comments are also accepted.
The only limitation is that comments unrelated to the essay, such as advertising posing as comments, or with links to unrelated sites, will be removed. That is why one or more of the comments posted on this blog entry are no longer here.
-- Nick
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