An internal battle continued to rage at the Los Angeles Times over high-priced Hollywood movie and TV ads designed to look like news articles and appearing where editorial used to be.
In an interview with TheWrap, executive editor John Arthur called a front-page ad for the new NBC show “Southland” “horrible” and “a mistake.”
Arthur, who was on vacation last week, said he was blindsided by the ad, which was labeled as an advertisement but designed to look like a news article. The editor said it was initially envisioned to go down the right side of the front page, usually the space reserved for the paper’s lead story.
“I’d been told an ad like that was coming, and before my trip I’d complained about it,” he said. “But I was told it was not imminent, that an ad of this shape was weeks or months away -- May or June was mentioned to me.”
Arthur was also critical of a four-page advertising supplement about the upcoming Paramount movie “The Soloist,” which was published on Sunday under the signature Los Angeles Times banner. The movie, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, is based on a book by the Times’ own columnist, Steve Lopez and featured an interview with him.
“I thought the type font that was used in the words ‘The Soloist’ at the top was uncomfortably close to the font we use in section fronts,” Arthur said, adding that he did not know that the supplement was coming either. Lopez could not be reached for comment.
But Lynne Segall, vice president for entertainment advertising at the paper, retorted in an email to TheWrap: "Russ Stanton, his boss, the editor of the paper, approved both advertorial units. The ad department in this company is not in a position nor would we ever be allowed to go out in the market to sell units like this without editorial vetting and giving us permission first."
The conflict over the appropriate placement and character of ads is dividing the business side from editorial and even the print from the digital side of the paper, capturing the untenable pressures facing newspapers in the waning days of print.
Editorial staffers feel the ads betray and devalue their work, while the business side says they are necessary to keep the struggling paper afloat. Meanwhile, digital staffers say that their counterparts in newsprint need to wake up and face inevitable change.
“I’m just trying to keep the lights on here, folks,” pleaded publisher Eddy Hartenstein as he faced an angry newsroom on Thursday, according to several people who were present.
Editor Russ Stanton had made his displeasure known to Hartenstein, but in his newsroom speech on Friday the publisher would not promise that a “Southland”-style ad would not happen again.
The conflict over the ads captures the internal divisions within newspapers as they struggle to survive. The Los Angeles Times is owned by Tribune Co., which is currently in bankruptcy, and the paper has been through several rounds of layoffs since Sam Zell bought it in 2007.
