Romenesko

Folks,

We do not talk to advertisers about what's in our news stories. We don't defer to them. When appropriate, we do take advantage of chances to bring news content together with advertising on a common-sense basis -- which we've always done. Think sports season previews, big sports or community events, themed travel sections like Celebrate Michigan or a cruising special, food coverage, health coverage, special projects like Top Workplaces. Advertisers want to appear with content that attracts the kinds of readers, customers, they are targeting. So it makes sense from an editorial standpoint, a business standpoint and a reader standpoint to create a win-win-win environment. But we do not waver on editorial independence.

Monday's Wall Street Journal was wrong on several levels: (1) Several points of fact or misleading references in the story. (2) The conclusions reached. (3) The headline.

Below is a copy of a letter we've sent to WSJ...

-- Paul, Jeff

.........

November 3, 2009
Mr. Robert Thomson
Managing Editor/Editor in Chief
The Wall Street Journal
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036

Dear Mr. Thomson:

We object to the misleading, inaccurate article and headline that appeared in Monday's Wall Street Journal. We ask that you publish our response below as a letter to the editor, use it as the basis to print a correction or clarification of inaccuracies in the article, or do both.

The article in Monday's Wall Street Journal did a disservice to the Detroit Free Press. The headline does not characterize how the Free Press newsroom approaches its job. The context of the story suggests that the Free Press somehow compromised its integrity. Several points of fact in the story were just plain wrong.

Here are the facts, painstakingly spelled out in answers to questions posed by the reporter.

(1) The idea for the articles published last Sunday in the Free Press about the Medicare enrollment period did not come from Humana, as the article and headline suggest. Humana acknowledges as much in the story. The Free Press expanded its coverage of the issue because the Client Solutions Group at the Detroit Media Partnership was able to sell a special section devoted to the topic. This is not exactly a new concept; newspapers have been arranging adjacency positions for news content and advertising for ... decades.

(2) The article also is inaccurate in how it portrays advertising done by Target in connection with our schools coverage. Target had told the Detroit Media Partnership advertising folks that it was interested in publishing ads with any schools coverage planned by the Free Press. The retailer specifically wanted to advertise on Sept. 20 and 27 -- consecutive Sundays -- because those are our widest circulation days. The ad folks checked with the newsroom, which predictably did have stories planned in September as the school year started. We did tell our ad folks that barring big news developments that could change our priorities, we could run stories on the 20th and 27th. Target was not in contact with the editor and publisher of the Free Press, nor anyone else in the Free Press newsroom. And nobody from the Free Press newsroom "relayed to Target," as suggested in the article, "the stories the paper had planned." Decisions about what's contained in our stories reside solely in the newsroom. We do not share that information with advertisers.

It's a shame that the facts and implications of the story were so off track. The fact is, we did nothing to compromise the newsroom while creating a win-win-win for our news coverage, for readers, and for advertisers to get their messages out in the best vehicle possible for them -- the Free Press.

And it would appear the Wall Street Journal did the same with a section it published on Monday, the same day the article about the Free Press appeared. The section was about investing in mutual funds, and it was full of ads from Vanguard, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, Oppenheimer, and others. Obviously, they chose to advertise in that section because they knew in advance there would be special coverage of mutual funds on that day

Paul Anger
Editor and Publisher
Detroit Free Press

Jeff Taylor
Senior Managing Editor
Detroit Free Press