• by John Capone , February 2, 2009

It might turn out that the most unrealistic and Pollyannish aspect of the fake July 4, 2009, "Iraq War Ends" edition of The New York Times distributed by pranksters last November was that the phony front page contained no display ads. The New York Times had never sullied its front page with display ads, at least not until the fearful economic climate and plummeting ad revenue got the best of them. Sure, it's sullied other sections, but it's all right for Sports or Metro to have ads on their front pages, right? Oh, wait, they were merged into other parts of the paper in an October restructuring and don't have front pages anymore. The ad sales team must have said, "Wonderful, with the 10 grand we save on printing we lose 20 in ads. Okay, new plan: Put the ad for cbs under the pictures of Palestinian children running from bombs."

So it has come to pass that the bottom band of the January 5 edition of the Times carried a full-color display ad below the fold. And as reported by, well, The New York Times on that same day, "Ordinarily, such space would be coveted by advertisers for its prominence." The hard-hitting story also quotes media industry insiders: "An ad on a paper's front page 'really stands out; it's very attractive,' said Beth Fidoten, senior vice president and director of print accounts at Initiative, a media buying firm." Initiative, of course, was cbs' agency at the time.

Perhaps even more shocking is the case of The Believer. The slightly esoteric literary monthly founded by Dave Eggers in 2003 did not accept advertising of any kind for the first five years of its existence. Andrew Leland, the managing editor, confirms that it has quietly begun taking ads - designed in-house so they mesh with the magazine and hardly resemble ads, actually - but "only books and music and movies, though. No bmws or vodka or cigarettes."

Of course, on this yellow brick road of budgetary madness, people do go both ways. When advertisers aren't buying, instead of trying ways to sweeten the deal, some publishers go in the opposite direction.

When Gawker Media's Nick Denton famously forecast a (widely refuted) 40-percent downturn in online ad spend, he coupled the doom-and-gloom with advice to publishers to shy away from those sectors that don't lend themselves to marketing sellouts. Hey, wasn't Gawker operating the watchdog blog Consumerist, which is about as hospitable to hawking housewares as Adbusters? Enter Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, which purchased the property in December, kept the content and staff and, of course, dropped the ads.

Consumer Reports, which is entirely subscriber supported, is also entirely supported by people who will likely be dead within the next decade or so. Despite the best intentions of consumerreports.org to take the publications into the digital age, the demographic hasn't changed much. According to Quantcast, more than three-quarters of Consumerist's readers are 18 to 49. So while the content on Consumerist remains free, Consumers Union is hoping it will bring younger subscribers to its other publications.

Whichever model proves more stable, one thing is certain, and it's the same thing that's always been certain: Somebody's going to pay.