PressEthic

Newspapers are full of advertisements, and while most are of the tame and boring variety, publishers sometimes manage to slip in those that are silly or even embarrassing for the gentle reader. In the case of one Texas newspaper, The San Antonio Express-News, it was an overtly racy ad for Conexión (the paper’s sister publication aimed at the Hispanic population) that featured a picture of “buxom Mexican entertainer,” Alejandra Guzmán placed directly across from an article about a charity organization that made readers blush.

Bob Richter, the public editor of Express-News reported:

“While the juxtaposition was unintentional, the ad on Page 3B of the Metro section abutted a news report about a new charity here for disabled people. Conceived by 'Desperate Housewives' star Eva Longoria, the story dealt with a sensitive topic — mental retardation. The ad was the antithesis of sensitive.”

And Richter isn’t the only one at the paper who acknowledges that running the ad was a mistake. Tom Stephenson, the publisher of the Express-News, told Richter that,

"There is no good excuse for either the cover of Conexión or the ad in the newspaper promoting that particular edition of Conexión….In the case of Conexión, our normal procedure is for the newspaper's editor, Bob Rivard, to sign off on potentially controversial covers. That did not happen...No one was more embarrassed than me.”

A few other top staff members of the paper were quoted as saying, “ we dropped the ball,” while another admitted that the decision of where to place the ad should have been “rethought.”

What’s surprising to me is not the poorly thought out ad placement, but how so many editors and managers are acknowledging that it was a bad idea. I mean, if you’ve made a mistake, by all means, admit that you were wrong, work to make it right, and move on.

But apparently, all of those eyes glazed over during production layout. If they feel that the decision was so bad that they went on the record saying so, you’d think that at least one of them would have picked it out before it even printed. Let’s hope that from now on, they’ll pay more critical attention to the paper’s ads before it goes to the printer.