Credibility vs. Sensitivity : High, Thick Wall Divides Editors and Advertisers

Early this century, Upton Sinclair wrote that the tendency of newspapers to use their news columns to promote the interests of their major advertisers was “inseparable from the business of publishing news for profit.”

Four years ago, Ben Bagdikian, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote that as recently as 1950 “it was common for newspapers to resist news that offended a major advertiser.”

“Department store fires, safety violations in stores, public health actions against restaurants that advertised, and lawsuits against car dealers seldom made their way into print.”

This practice was so widespread that, in the early 1940s, when the city editor of the New York Herald Tribune ordered a reporter to make the name of a major department store the very first words of his story about a shooting in the store--thus defying attempts by the store to keep the shooting out of the paper altogether--the editor was regarded as something of a journalistic hero.

By and large, the practice of providing big advertisers with news page puffery--or, when indicated, benign neglect--is less common now than ever before. Yes, some newspapers--especially smaller newspapers--are still influenced by the demands of their major advertisers. Even some large, reputable papers are, on occasion, unduly attentive to the sensitivities of the advertisers most responsible for their survival and their profits. It would be naive to think that these things don’t happen in the 1980s; newspapers are, after all, still in the business of “publishing news for profit.”

Five years ago, when the parent company of a major advertiser in the Trenton Times asked that a press release on its financial problems be published exactly as written, a Trenton Times reporter who instead rewrote the release was fired. Two months later, the editorial director of a group of community newspapers in suburban Detroit quit after his publisher ordered him to “aggressively support, promote and report (on) . . . those business organizations who support us with their advertising.”

In New York, in 1983, an entertainment editor at the Daily News rejected a press agent’s request that he assign feature stories on the Broadway play “On Your Toes” after the producers of the play had quoted the Daily News’ rave review in a two-page advertisement in the New York Times (whose critic had panned the play) but hadn’t advertised in the Daily News.

Wall Between Departments

Such incidents are exceptions today, though. A high, thick wall has arisen between the news/editorial and advertising departments at most responsible papers, and editors, publishers and advertising executives alike speak of this wall as a largely unbreachable barrier, akin to the separation of church and state in our society.

Because television is so dependent on ratings--which provide the basis for its advertising rates--television seems more sensitive to advertiser demands, especially in terms of program content and taste, than do newspapers. Many magazines also generally seem more reluctant than newspapers to risk offending advertisers.

Tobacco products account for about 9% of all magazine advertising revenue, for example, and reporter Susan Okie documented in the Washington Post 14 months ago instances of prestigious magazines killing or modifying stories on smoking that could have offended these advertisers.

The magazines denied that advertising considerations were involved in their decisions, but Okie also pointed out that three magazines that refuse cigarette advertising had published 46 stories among them on smoking over the previous decade, while among 10 other similar magazines that do carry cigarette ads, none published more than four stories on smoking and five published no stories at all.

Advertising executives at most of the better newspapers have come to realize, however, that what a newspaper sells, above all, is credibility. If that credibility is compromised, whether by shoddy news reporting or by special treatment for advertisers, both the paper and the advertiser ultimately suffer. If readers can’t trust a newspaper, they won’t buy it; if they don’t buy it, the advertiser’s message will not be seen--and his products and services will not be purchased.

Unfortunately, not all advertisers understand that.

Pressure From Advertisers

A 1983 study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors showed that 78% of more than 300 newspapers surveyed across the country said they received some pressure from advertisers on news coverage--and almost half the editors said they encountered such pressure several times a year or more.

Although Peter Kann, associate publisher of the Wall Street Journal, says, “Most companies we deal with these days are much more sophisticated about the relationship between news and advertising than to cancel their advertising because we publish stories they don’t like,” such cancellations do take place. Often.

Indeed, Mobil Oil Co. hasn’t advertised in (or spoken to reporters from) the Journal in more than two years, precisely because Mobil objected to several stories the Journal had published on the company and its officials.

In the year before it began this boycott, Mobil spent about $500,000 on advertising in the Journal.

John Reid Jr., advertising manager for the Boston Globe, says an advertiser who once spent $75,000 a year in the Globe canceled his ads after the Globe endorsed a political candidate he didn’t like. Eastern Airlines canceled an estimated $100,000 in advertising in the Atlanta Journal after publication of a Page 1 story on problems in the airline’s baggage system at the Atlanta airport. A major retailer in Chicago reduced his advertising for several months, costing the Chicago Tribune several hundred thousand dollars, because a Tribune fashion layout omitted the name of his store.

Raymond McManus, assistant advertising director for the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, says an automobile dealer canceled his ads in the Examiner last year after the paper published an article that said the autographed footballs he was giving away to customers had actually been signed by employees of the dealership, not--as advertised--by 49er quarterback Joe Montana.

Times interviews with advertising executives at more than 50 newspapers across the country suggest that automobile dealers are the most sensitive of all advertisers--the most likely to cancel advertising because they don’t like a newspaper’s news coverage or its editorial position.

Auto Dealers Cancel Ads

Automobile dealers in Salina, Kan., canceled advertising in the Salina Journal several years ago because the paper editorially supported a city sales tax measure. Automobile dealers in Charleston, W.Va., canceled or cut back their advertising in the Charleston Gazette after a seven-part series on automotive sales and service. Auto dealers in Jackson, Tenn., canceled advertising in the Jackson Sun to protest two stories telling readers how to buy new cars at lower prices.

Some papers may give in to that kind of pressure. Most newspapers resist.

Dave Lawrence, publisher of the Detroit Free Press, says his paper lost several hundred thousand dollars in advertising revenue last year when auto dealers canceled advertising in the paper after two Page 1 stories on a Federal Trade Commission investigation of charges that dealers had conspired to reduce competition by fixing prices and reducing the days and hours they were open.

Lawrence later wrote a column on the affair--as he has done several times in recent years on advertising controversies. Lawrence’s column supported his editors and reporters and said, “A credible newspaper for readers is also a good home for advertisers.”

Detroit auto dealers soon resumed advertising in the Free Press.

Most advertisers who pull their ads out of newspapers return within days or weeks or, on occasion, a few months, no matter how angry they originally are.

That’s what Delta Air Lines did last year after canceling its ads in several papers that published stories on the survivors of Delta Flight 191, which had crashed in Dallas a year earlier.

In at least one situation, however, airlines advertising represents a special case for newspapers: Most newspapers automatically pull all airline advertising from the paper the day any airline crash is reported, even if the crash doesn’t involve an advertiser. The airlines don’t have to call the papers to ask for the cancellation; it’s a standing request, and it’s routinely granted “as a matter of courtesy and . . . good taste,” in the words of Jeremy Halbreich, executive vice president and general manager of the Dallas Morning News.

Pulling Airline Ads

If a commercial airliner crashes after a paper’s advertising department is closed for the day, the ads are pulled by an editor; at most papers, the editors in charge of supervising the makeup of the paper at night know of this standing request, too.

This is one of the few instances of that kind of cooperation between the news or editorial departments and the advertising departments of most newspapers. But it is not the only one.

Although most newspaper advertising departments either check themselves or require movie advertisers to check the accuracy of any quotes they use from reviews, for example, both the Los Angeles Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal & Times ask their own movie critics to look at any quotes excerpted from their reviews to be certain that the quotes accurately reflect the tone and content of the reviews.

The Los Angeles Times advertising department also asks the paper’s film critics to look at X-rated or unrated movies to determine whether they have the redeeming social value the paper insists upon before accepting movie ads.

The St. Petersburg Times requires that every political ad be approved before publication by three top editors, as well as the chairman of the board and the vice president in charge of advertising.

Sometimes the coordination between news or editorial and advertising is even more direct.

In 1978, when the Chicago Sun-Times published a series of articles on abuses in the city’s abortion clinics, it simultaneously stopped publication of all advertising for the clinics.

In some other cities, newspaper editors alert their advertising departments if the paper is planning to publish a big story critical of an advertiser.

Sometimes the alert is given as a matter of courtesy, just so the advertising department won’t be surprised if the advertiser calls to complain the day the story is published; sometimes the alert is given so the advertising department can stop publishing ads that might be dishonest and could embarrass the paper.

Ralph Langer, executive editor of the Dallas Morning News, says he’s done that on infrequent occasion, but editors at other papers say any such notification of their advertising departments would constitute a violation of the separation and independence of the two departments.

‘A Safe Distance’

“We haven’t done it, and we wouldn’t do it,” says Gene Roberts, executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “We like the newsroom to stay a safe distance from any advertising considerations.”

Leo Bogart, director of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, says this church/state division has “in some ways . . . been counterproductive.”

“In the last 10 years,” Bogart says, “there’s been an attempt at . . . getting editors and people on the business side--advertising, circulation, promotion and so on--to think about the problems that newspaper people have in common.”

It is not surprising that an advertising executive would take that position. But a few editors agree with Bogart.

James D. Squires, editor of the Chicago Tribune, is probably the most outspoken advocate of this position among major newspaper editors.

At the Tribune, as at most metropolitan dailies, the advertising department is housed on a different floor than the news and editorial departments--a separation intended to be philosophical as well as physical. (At some papers--including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, though not the Tribune--the news and editorial departments are also on separate floors).

But for many years, Squires says, the elevators that went to the Tribune advertising department didn’t even stop on the floor where the Tribune news and editorial departments are. It was as if the news and editorial employes feared contamination if anyone buying or selling advertising came near them.

“That old church/state thing seems to me to be an anachronism, something that probably ought to disappear,” Squires says.

Squires isn’t out to undermine the traditional independence of the newspaper news and editorial departments. He thinks that independence is essential to a newspaper’s credibility. In fact, he makes formal presentations periodically to the paper’s new advertising salesmen, trying both to build mutual trust between the two departments and to explain the need for independent, honest news coverage.

“I tell them that if we ever get to the point where the readers can’t believe us (in the news columns) because we’ve given in to advertisers’ pressure, that loss of credibility will transfer to the advertising, too,” he says.

‘Compromise Our Integrity’

“We don’t mind telling the advertising department we’re doing (a section) on the ski slopes of Colorado in six weeks so they can go sell some (appropriate) ads,” Squires says. “That brings down the walls (between advertising and news). But we don’t let them tell us they want us to do something on the ski slopes of Colorado because they’ve already sold three ads or they think they can sell some ads for it. That would compromise our integrity.”

Squires thinks a newspaper editor who doesn’t take some interest in advertising is “like a one-handed man trying to hang paper.”

Unlike the highest-ranking editor at most newspapers--who, like the highest-ranking advertising executive--reports to the publisher, Squires says he has been executive vice president of both papers he’s edited, with the advertising director below him, so that the editorial department has a strong voice in important advertising decisions.

“It seems to me the readers think the policies of the newspaper, all of them, are set by the editors,” he says. “I even get calls asking why we have risque underwear ads on Page 2 or 3.”

Editors at most other major papers say they deal with such mistaken impressions by explaining to readers--and to advertisers--that they have nothing to do with advertising. They are fiercely proud of that separation. Squires is equally proud of his contact with advertisers and says he knows the Tribune’s top advertisers as well as the paper’s advertising director does. He even meets regularly with Tribune advertising executives to “help police our advertising.”

Joe Leonard, managing editor of the Tribune, says the paper’s advertising department comes to him or Squires “probably about once a month” with questions on ads that might be controversial or in poor taste.

“I can’t stress too much the good working relationship, the cooperation we have between the departments,” Leonard says.

This is in direct contrast to the practice at many papers, most notably the New York Times, where Robert Smith, manager of the paper’s advertising acceptability department, says, “Consultation with editorial is almost non-existent when it comes to determining the acceptability of advertising.”

‘Almost a Crusade’

Squires says he takes the unusual approach he does toward advertising--”almost a crusade,” he calls it--because “I know of nothing that has more impact on what we do than advertising.” In a sense, he’s right. Advertising revenue generally pays for about 75% of the cost of publishing a daily newspaper. Advertising sales and placement also help determine the configuration of the daily paper--how many pages will be published, how much space will be available for news and pictures on each page and in each section, even whether certain new sections (book reviews, Sunday magazines, science and health sections) can be profitably published at all.

Moreover, there are significant changes taking place in newspaper advertising these days, and most of these changes affect a paper’s news department.

The increasing ability of newspapers to print lucrative color advertising, for example, has enabled the news pages to use color, too--and some papers’ preoccupation with pretty color pictures, at the expense of substantive news, has raised questions about journalistic ethics and priorities.

Special advertising sections and supplements included in the daily paper create another problem for editors. These sections and supplements are devoted to a particular subject (honoring A students) or product (recreational vehicles) and are produced entirely by the advertising department at most major papers but with the help of the news department at some smaller papers. The sections usually have ads, stories and pictures, and some of the sections could be mistaken for legitimate news coverage. To make certain that readers realize all this material is paid advertising, not traditional news copy, editors insist that they be clearly labeled as advertising and that they not use any of the type styles used in the news pages.

This is not a small problem; the number of special sections and supplements is increasing astronomically. The Los Angeles Times, which published 38 of them in 1970, published 1,516 last year.

There has also been a significant increase in the number of advertisers using separate, pre-printed advertising sections that are then inserted in the paper. Expenditures for these pre-prints have increased almost 400%, from $835 million in 1976 to more than $4.1 billion in 1986. An advertiser using a pre-print usually has it printed independently; thus, he pays the newspaper substantially less money for this kind of advertising than he would pay for traditional advertising in the newspaper itself.

Fewer Ads, Less Money

Less advertising revenue means less money available to spend on news-gathering--and less advertising in the regular paper means smaller papers, which means less space for news.

At most major newspapers, the news department is given either an annual space “budget” or daily guaranteed space minimums, based in part on the news department’s anticipated needs and in part on predetermined advertising ratios “calculated by the publisher and the executive editor and the business side (so they can) . . . be reasonably confident at the end of the year that we won’t lose money,” in the words of Allan M. Siegal, assistant managing editor of the New York Times.

Although some newspapers insist on greater profit margins--and hence provide a smaller percentage of news space--than do others, most major newspapers empower their editors to increase the size of the budgeted “news hole” on a given day to accommodate major stories, regardless of the advertising ratio or profitability that day.

On a busy news day, the news department may need more than the normally budgeted figure; on a slow news day, it may settle for less, to save that space for later, busier days.

As Siegal says, “how much news there is in the world . . . has precious little to do with whether Mr. Macy or Ms. Gimbel felt like advertising on a given day. . . . “

All newspapers have advertising deadlines that enable them to plan the configuration of the next day’s paper in time to give the news department sufficient time to lay out its headlines, stories and illustrations on forms provided by the ad department and known as “dummies” (scaled replicas of each page in the paper, with the space for ads and available news space both marked).

What happens when an ad comes in after the deadline?

That depends on the paper--and the advertiser.

“We try not to make exceptions (to our deadlines),” says Erich Linker, advertising director for the New York Times, “but department stores are constantly late and you have to accommodate them; they’re your big advertisers.”

‘Get the Dollar’

Or, as Jack Miller, who lays out the ad dummies at the Los Angeles Times, says:

“We have a deadline, but we’ll take any ad, no matter how late it comes in, if we can get it in the paper. The name of the game is ‘get the dollar,’ and that’s what we do.”

Just as late ads sometimes force editors to remove, relocate or shorten stories or eliminate pictures, so late stories sometimes force editors to remove ads--something top editors at most good papers have the authority to do, when necessary. But neither actually happens all that often; if a late story or ad can’t be easily accommodated--and if it’s big enough and important enough--a newspaper may increase its size by two or four pages that day to solve the problem.

At most newspapers, the annual space budget is broken down into daily totals, since there are often considerable differences in space needs according to the day of the week and the configuration of the paper. Saturday papers tend to be smaller than other days because there’s generally less advertising; in contrast, papers may need extra space for sports on Mondays, especially during the professional football season.

The division of space between sections--news, business, entertainment, sports, etc.--varies considerably from newspaper to newspaper, based on individual priorities and press capacities, but the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post each devote 27% to 30% of its total, non-advertising space Monday through Friday to news--local, national and foreign stories and pictures.

At some newspapers--60% of them, according to a 1980 survey--advertisers may request a special position in the paper and, generally, pay a premium for it. Such positions are generally high-visibility spots in the paper--Pages 2 or 3 or 4 of the main news section in some papers, the back page of various sections in other papers.

Selling premium positions to advertisers can be very lucrative.

The Los Angeles Times has only two premium positions--Pages 4 and 5 of the Sunday paper--for which advertisers pay 25% more than they would pay to advertise elsewhere in the paper. But the Washington Post has about a dozen premium positions, and the New York Times has more than 200, for which premiums of 8% to 50% are charged.

The St. Petersburg Times has one premium position--on the page that carries Ann Landers’ column; advertisers pay 30% more for advertising there than they would pay for the same space elsewhere in the paper.

Susanna Shuster of The Times’ editorial library assisted with research for this story.