Why Did it Take the NYT so Long to Admit Their Error?
The New York Times gave Moveon.org a price break on the General Pretraeus / General Betray Us ad.
Two weeks later they admitted they made a mistake.
Why so long?
At first, I thought it was stalling. After some thought I can understand why it took so long.
First, the ad was scheduled on a Friday for a Monday insertion. Moveon.org was told by a NYT ad rep that the ad would cost $65,000. The ad ran Monday. By the end of the week, all hell broke loose as the price break became public.
The Times first said the price was appropriate because it was a “stand-by” rate for advertisers who didn’t care when the ad ran within the next seven days. A common practice among newspapers.
Then they backed off completely and said it was a mistake and never should have happened.
Why so long? Because they wanted to get it right. First they had to confirm there was a price break. A short call to billing would do that. They they had to start down the chain of command to determine the exact sequence of events, how they occured, why they occurred, and who was involved.
When they felt they had it right, they gave it to their public editor to make a column out of it.
Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, said, “We made a mistake.” She said the advertising representative failed to make it clear that for that rate The Times could not guarantee the Monday placement but left MoveOn.org with the understanding that the ad would run then. She added, “That was contrary to our policies.”
Those outside the business - and maybe some inside the business - will say its just the NYT showing its liberal bias.
I think its a case of haste makes waste. The ad rep was pressured by Moveon.org to get the ad in, he knew about the stand-by rate, thought it qualified and accepted the ad. I would wager that the ad rep slept well Friday night not realizing the furor that was about to be unleashed because he didn’t think to get management approval to accept the ad.
September 28th, 2007 at 7:00 am
I’m going with the haste makes waste attitude as well.
But, and this is just at our paper, political ads do not qualify for any discounts and must be paid in advance. This includes parties, grassroots, candidates, etc.
It’s been that way for a long time. And, if something is controversial, it goes before the Ad Manager, the publishers/owners and myself.
A practice, of course, learned the hard way from many years ago.
September 28th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Same here - anything slightly out of the ordinary raises red flags and gets a lot of attention.
However, it is possible that the ad came in later electronically and nobody with any authority saw the ad until Monday morning after it was printed.