In a piece that is so overly long as to be tiresome, Michael Stoll, writing at GradeTheNews.org, goes after the
San Jose Mercury News for its habit of disguising display advertising as
legitimate news. GradeTheNews focuses on San Francisco Bay-area media, and as such can be a useful watchdog.
The Mercury News is an influential local paper which, because of its location in
the heart of the Silicon Valley, is often cited by national publications on matters high-tech. What set off writer Stoll was a recent full-page ad for "collectible coins" that clearly was designed
to look like a feature story. It did, in fact, carry a disclaimer ("Special advertising feature"), but in type so small as to be virtually undetectable, according to the writer. As it happens,
the ad did in fact violate the
Mercury News' own policy concerning the identification of paid advertising. Stoll notes in his screed that other Bay Area papers had likewise tried to fool
readers by masquerading advertising as news. (Several examples are included on the Web site for illustrative purposes.) This is an important subject and merits our attention, not to mention our
contempt. It does not, however, justify four and one-half pages (when printed out) of online reportage.
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Read the whole story at GradeTheNews.org »