So the semester’s first production night has just ended, and I’m really tired, but I thought I’d make a short post because I’ve been neglecting the blog for, oh, the last month and a half. Tuesday’s opinions section carries an inside our pages piece from me about The Hatchet’s featuring a small front-page color ad starting this Thursday. The ad, which will run every Thursday during the spring semester, virtually ensures our having a color front page for the term’s all 29 issues.
No doubt it’s an unorthodox move that flies in the face of traditional journalism tenets. But after a few weeks of thinking last semester, I concluded that the benefits of a small front-page ad greatly outweigh its drawbacks. Sure it’s tacky, but it also guarantees a better product. Our excellent photo department (which I believe is in the top five among college newspapers nationwide) deserves a color front page every issue. And so do our readers, especially at a time when major newspapers are losing college-age readers in droves. I think color entices more people to pick up the paper.
This is an experiment; we’ll see how it goes. I’d greatly appreciate feedback from readers of this blog. I hope everyone had a happy holiday season.
Michael Barnett
I don’t agree that ads are not placed on the front page of a newspaper merely because of “arbitrary symbolism” or that allowing such advertising will “guarantee a better product.” Allowing front page ads is simply a way to maximize revenue – the Hatchet could have color each issue, but that would cost money; find another way to get color at no cost to the Hatchet and the problem is solved.
A newspaper’s front page is where readers are told which stories are the most important. It is supposed to be a place where the paper’s editorial side is completely untouched by its advertising side. Same thing for the editorial page.
Those two sections – front page and editorial page – are the only ones where there is – and should be – a total separation between editorial content and any ads. Why? Because those are the two sections where readers should be able to read editorial content without any distractions from ads.
If, as Michael argues, it is merely “arbitrary symbolism” to keep ads off the front page, then isn’t it equally arbitrary to go with a small ad just on Thursdays? Why not another ad on Mondays? Why not re-arrange the front page layout to allow for more or larger ads? If the goal is simply to maximize revenue so as to allow for regular color issues, then how does one draw the line between journalistic concerns and profit maximization without being arbitrary by definition?
A further point: traditionally, the Hatchet made a very significant amount of money during SA elections season. Since the front page’s “ad virginity” has been broken, so to speak, why not allow SA candidates to place their campaign ads on the front page? It would be completely arbitrary to not allow a small front-page campaign ad. And why stop there? Why not use the same reasoning to place ads – whether commercial or campaign – on the editorial page? Since the ads would clearly be labeled as such, there would be no concern that they would be implicit Hatchet endorsements of the candidate or company (just like the front-page pizza ad is not an endorsement by the Hatchet of the pizza company). And yet…such ads would reek because of their symbolism.
Didn’t last year’s (and probably any future) election rules prohibit SA candidates from taking out ads in the Hatchet?
This isn’t about the Front Page Ad, it’s a Hatchet article question.
In Monday’s edition, there was a feature article that depended entirely on the comments of Audai Shakour’s alleged sexual assult/harassment victim. Now, while it is most major papers, etc. it is policy to not identify alleged victims, it is quite another matter to allow her to go unidentified while telling her “side” of the story, particularly while revealing obviously confidential information, or at least information that the Hatchet and students would not normally have access to. Typically, if any victim, particuarly when the accused was found to not be in violation, was to receive that much press to continue to push the story, they would have to go on record. Otherwise, they do not have to face any questions or comments on their own side of the story. It’s clearly not fair. If she refused to go on the record, then the Hatchet should have let the story die.