Inquirer's Ad-sponsored Column Debuts to Mixed Reviews

Many newspaper industry observers are watching The Philadelphia Inquirer this week as it launched a staff-written business column Monday that will run on the paper's weekday business front.

It's not the column's content that is creating the buzz. It's the fact that the column space is sponsored by a local business. Citizens Bank is paying for the column space and will have its logo adorning it and its familiar green ink color outlining it. The column gives readers bite-sized nuggets of news gleaned from SEC documents and other local company news.

Think of old-time television with NBC or CBS anchors telling the audience that this broadcast was sponsored by General Electric or some other corporation.

The paper's managers say the column is in no way an advertorial. The content remains under the strict control of the Inquirer's business staff and editors.

"There's been a lot of concern (from staff) over the appearance of sponsorship and what it means," said Tony Gnoffo, the paper's assistant managing editor for business. "I tell them what my bosses tell me. We're totally in control of this thing."

In fact, the ad revenue generated by column will partially pay for an editor who will be hired to coordinate and oversee the column.

Still, the idea that independently gathered news is being coupled with ad-sponsored space rankles some of the paper's own staff as well as some newspaper pundits.

"They should never blur the line between what is and what is not for sale in a newspaper," said newspaper analyst John Morton.

But even Morton's own former business partner sees it differently.

"It's just another form of advertising," said Miles Groves, a media economist based in Washington, D.C. "You may have to educate readers on what it means if they notice at all. A lot of publications use page sponsorships. It just hasn't been the case in newspapers."

To date, no major U.S. daily has taken this path to creating new ad revenue. But Gnoffo says if the Inquirer's foray works out, more newspapers will likely follow suit.

"We've lived and worked with advertising on our pages forever," he said. "Unless a reader revolt emerges, I can't imagine other newspapers won't do this."

The decision marks just how far newspapers are willing to go in search of generating revenue. Old firewalls between editorial and advertising are being rethought. And the intense focus on the bottom line is likely to lead to more non-traditional decisions down the road.

"The fact is the newspaper business is changing," Gnoffo said. "These are times when we have to pursue revenue more aggressively to generate what we need to keep this institution functioning."

In a New York Times article on the ad-sponsored column that ran in April, the Inquirer's editor, William Marimow, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and by all accounts a journalist's journalist, described the sponsorship as "discreet" labeling.

There's no doubt that the roiling in the newspaper industry has affected the Inquirer, once considered one of the nation's best at producing quality journalism. Its staff has been cut in half since earlier in the decade. While it still has continued to produce strong enterprise stories, it hasn't won a Pulitzer Prize since the early 1990s.

The paper's new owners, led by publisher Brian Tierney, an ad executive from Philadelphia, cut 71 newsroom positions in January through buyouts, attrition and layoffs.

But even if management truly believes that the sponsorship will not affect its editorial content in the least, there's reason to be concerned. It's not the columns that will be written as much as the ones that won't be explored that has some concerned.

"There are subconscious things that happen," said Morton. "That's why there is a separation between editorial and advertising. What's next? Car dealers sponsoring car columns."