My copy of the San Francisco Chronicle this morning came wrapped in a page-and-a-half ad touting the beginning of Emirates Airlines' new SF-to-Dubai non-stop luxury flights. A great ad placement in a difficult time for the print newspaper business.
Inside the paper, on the top of Page B1, was a story critical of Emirates because they are not bound by SF anti-discriminary employment rules and therefore discourage pregnant or gay flight attendants.
I know what the print media dinosaurs would say: the editorial side is cordoned off from advertising and there's no connection between the ad and the story. While it may technically be true, to me that's head-in-the-sand bullshit. There's obviously a connection in terms of public perception of the airline, which just spent however many thousands of dollars on that ad, with the hope of getting off to a good start on their new route. I guarantee you that Emirate's top brass and advertising people are livid today and may well scale back their spending on future Chronicle advertising. To add insult to injury, the story is now as I write this on the top of the Chronicle's home page.
I don't know what the dinosaur media can do about this, because they are so in love with their increasingly quaint and outdated standards of practice. I'm not saying they should have pulled their punches regarding the discriminatory practices, but it's just real-world clueless to run that story on the same day as the big ad.
As a former print journalist I have to ask, what makes you so sure the newsroom even KNEW? Sometimes we got told about wrappers and stickies and the like, but sometimes we had no clue until the full product came up from the mailroom. You can't head off a conflict you can't see coming. And yes, that just points out another problem with the sacred wall between editorial and advertising.
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