Advertising Age
So this Bonna Johnson story about a sale at a Brentwood boutique can still be found on The Tennessean's website and, incredibly enough, it's tagged as a local news story. How is that possible? It's a flat-out ad. There is no other way to describe it.
Worst of all, it's hard to imagine that the Stacey Rhodes Boutique buys that many Tennessean ads. So if you're going to whore yourself out, at least make some cash.
At first, I reasoned the posting of Johnson's story was a simple mistake. Maybe it was meant as ad copy and somehow was cut and pasted into a news template. I don't know, I'm trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe the write-up was meant for one of the paper's shopping blogs and somehow was filed incorrectly. But here we are, nearly a day later, and the story remains the same. Is it possible that The Tennessean thinks that a sale at a tiny Brentwood clothing store in the midst of an economic downturn is newsworthy?
We're waiting on an official explanation from Tennessean editor Mark Silverman, but until then, does anyone have any idea how this happened?
Unreal.
Comments
What is just as disturbing is that Bonna Johnson (formerly de la Cruz), a fine political reporter who moved to features, is being made to write this kind of crap.
Posted 07/10/2008 at 10:23:20 AMThere's a simple explanation of how it happened...incompetence.
Posted 07/10/2008 at 02:25:44 PMI wish all the papers in town would just fuck or fight and get it over with.
They said this, he said that, we're better than they are, blah, blah, blah. Please write about something we care about again. Everyone on the planet knows you hate the other papers in town and that you think they suck, they all hate you, etc, WE GOT IT. Now let it go. I beg you. As a health care professional, take my advice, let it go. It is boring.
Posted 07/11/2008 at 02:51:19 PMDitto that comment, word for word. It all seems so petty.
Posted 07/11/2008 at 07:12:40 PMWell, this is a news and media blog. And it's pretty much unheard of for a paper to write a news story about a sale at a specific store.
So there's that.
Posted 07/12/2008 at 01:55:16 PMMatt,
Posted 07/12/2008 at 02:13:06 PMWas this printed in the paper or just posted on The Tennessean website??