Recent visitors to a number of news Web sites in Ohio and Texas have discovered a common theme proclaimed, megaphone-style, at the top of the page: "Vote for Barack Obama."
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The message had nothing to do with news or editorial endorsement. The red, white and blue banner dropping down into the home pages of such papers as the Akron
Beacon Journal and the
Houston Chronicle was paid political advertising, as the small print indicates at the bottom of the ad: "Paid for by Obama for America."
There's nothing new about political advertising -- on various news platforms -- on the eve of critical elections. But MediaWeek
reported last week that the ad "represents the first major Web effort for a presidential candidate to incorporate video." Mediaweek said the ad has been placed on the sites of 26 local TV, radio and newspaper Web sites in Ohio and Texas.
The prominence and interactivity of the ad are also striking. Arrive at the page and watch the top of the page disappear below the ad. Click the play button and you'll see and hear the candidate. Click the Go button and you can fill in your address and find the location of your polling or caucus location.
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Ohio.com
Ohio.com site produced by the Akron Beacon Journal |
The ad raises a series of interesting questions that we've sent to editors and news directors at a number of outlets in Ohio and Texas. We spotted the ad on the online sites of the
Akron Beacon Journal, the Cincinnati
Enquirer, the
Houston Chronicle, the Fort Worth
Star-Telegram and the
Dallas Morning News. We also sent our questions to editors at several news organizations whose sites do not appear be carrying the ad.
We list our questions here and invite your additions and revisions. (We've tried to avoid what my Poynter colleague, Rick Edmonds, characterized as a "have you stopped beating your wife?" tone, but we'll let you be the judge of our even-handedness or lack thereof.)
We'll post responses from the news organizations as we receive them.
(Monday night update:
Dallas Morning News editor Bob Mong and Tom Callinan, editor and vice president of the Cincinnati
Enquirer, respond below.)
- Do you run political ads on the front page of your print paper? How about political ads on post-it style ads? Political ads on delivery bags?
- How did you decide to accept/reject the ad? How might you approach your decision differently if the ad had been of the attack variety?
- Can you refer us to a url with the standards and practices for online advertising that helped guide your decision on this?
- How much risk is there that readers will view the ad as support for the candidate by the paper as opposed to paid political advertising?
- If you ran the ad, what feedback have you gotten from readers? Did you explain the decision to run the ad to readers?
- When you decided to accept or reject the ad, did you consider issues of perception related to your paper's endorsement decision?
- Did you propose modifying the ad as the campaign presented it? If so, how and why?
- Might your decision about the ad have been different if business conditions were different?
- How might you approach decisions like this differently in the future?
In an e-mail response, Bob Mong of the
Dallas Morning News said he believes there was "very little risk" of readers interpreting the ad as the paper supporting the candidate. "I give readers a lot of credit," he added.
He said business conditions played no role in the paper's decision to accept the ad. On the question of how he might approach decisions like this differently in the future, he wrote: "As long as we look at proposals case by case and apply our standards consistently, we should be fine. We do need a technological solution so that a candidate's video does not run just before a news story on the candidate. We have raised that issue, and I expect it to be fixed before the general election."
Tom Callinan of the Cincinnati
Enquirer sent the following response by e-mail:
"A disclaimer: My daughter is involved in Senator Obama's campaign, specifically developing an internet strategy.
So I'll share this with Hollis Towns, our executive editor.
Because of my conflict I showed him the ad and our decision was that it was not that unusual in the digital world, although certainly that type of intrusion would not work in print...
I can say that 'business conditions' did not impact our decision. We have a policy here that advertising alerts content people of these types of issues and we have the final say if we feel the user experience suffers or a line is crossed."
