• Editor & Publisher, Thursday, April 19, 2007 10:32 AM

The San Francisco Chronicle has become the latest newspaper to publish a front-page ad, with a six-inch by five-inch box in the lower right corner from Pacific Gas & Electric.

The paper thus joins many other big-city and national dailies in the growing industry trend to leverage anything and everything to garner more revenue. Editor Phil Bronstein defends the decision and says it will not affect news coverage: "These are the times we live in. It is a hard case to make that you shouldn't do this as a concept, when you are in as much of a financial hole as we are."

He adds that the newspaper had gotten a couple of calls about it, but so far, no big deal. He notes the other papers, like The Wall Street Journal, are already doing it. "No one's complaining at the Journal..." he says. "It's not like PG&E is sitting in on news meetings."

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