Didn't see this posted. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6250BL20100306 Reuters UK: "The ad, believed to be the first of its kind among America's leading big-city dailies, dismayed some readers and was lamented by media scholars as the latest troubling sign of difficult times at the newspaper and for journalism generally. Depp's image -- emblazoned with the phrase, "Johnny Depp is the Mad Hatter" -- overlaps an old weather photo and two columns of reprinted stories about health-care and Afghanistan, minus bylines and other names. The word "Advertisement" appears in smaller type just below the masthead. Hollywood blogger Sharon Waxman cited one "media buyer insider" as saying the Walt Disney Co, the studio behind the film, paid $700,000 for the space. "That's a low price to sell your soul," said Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, who expressed sympathy for the paper and discomfort at the blurring of commercial and editorial interests." Although this be seem a trivial issue for many on here, it's disturbing that this trend of selling journalism integrity/ethics for money is increasing. Yes, newspapers/print media are dying. But it's times and economies like these that forces innovation to survive. However, what theory doesn't account for is the human capacity to avoid that change i.e. Fortune 500 companies not responding to workers' demands/frustrations through outsourcing'. The theoretical wall that's supposed to provide support against an encroaching force simply caves in.
Maybe a bit much here. A paper in LA advertising a movie, even this crudely, just isn't that troubling. Now I'm kind of waiting for that good oil rig advertisment on the Chronicle or Dallas Morning News front page. LA Times in particular is probably due for some tough choices: that town seems like a deceptively large market with average to below-average readership. For all the fuss about the TW/AOL fail, I think most other old-media companies should've tried something similar back then (or maybe just wait a year for the NASDAQ to lose 60-70%).
