With
The Wall Street Journal allowing ads on the front page and
The New York Times printing them on the front of its business section,
Crain's Chicago Business wonders if the
Chicago Tribune is next. With some news-only pages being eyed for a makeover, a spokeswoman tells the weekly that the region's largest daily is "exploring opportunities" for advertising on the
front pages of more newspaper sections. It currently only sells them at the head of classified sections, but not beefier sections, like Metro, Sports, and Tempo. The back page of the
Tribune's
weekday A section--a news-only zone right now--could also host ads in the future. While some purists have decried the trend, Steven Duke, managing director for training at Northwestern University's
Media Management Center, says keeping front pages ad-free is a tradition that goes back only a half-century. Ads on front pages are common elsewhere in the world. "There is no clear logic that would
say an ad on the front page undercuts the ethics of the news on that page," says Duke, "while an ad on page 3 does not."
advertisement
advertisement
Read the whole story at Crain's Chicago Business »
