Breaking with longstanding policy, the NYT on Monday placed its first front page ad, with media giant CBS taking advantage of the new opportunity.The debate over front page ads is old, but still relevant...
"Page-one ads may net premium prices, but they're distasteful to many journalists who believe they violate the purity of page one and the sacred wall between news and business. From a design standpoint, they can detract from the flow and order of a page. They also eat up space that otherwise could be devoted to stories, particularly in an era of dwindling newsholes." [Donna Shaw, AJR, June/July 2007]
"To give the whole front page away seems to me a dangerous message to send to readers. The front page is for the news you consider most important to the community." [Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, NYT, Apr 17, 2006]
"Instead of treating the arrival of front-page ads as some sort of last straw for a distressed industry, newspapers would be smarter to treat it as the first step in their modernization. If they don't tell anybody that that their revolutionarily idea is a retread from 1800s, neither will I." [Jack Shafer, Slate, Sept 7, 2006]
