News, advertising are separate

This is the main portion of my Sunday, Aug. 29, Column in The Gazette, but with links to source material. The column runs regularly on page 2A of each Sunday's paper, which also is available here in electronic form for a subscription of $4.95/month.

We made an interesting decision last week and I'd welcome your feedback on it.

We had planned a front page story for the Tuesday, Aug. 24, Gazette about Mount Mercy College changing its name to Mount Mercy University, and the expansion of the Cedar Rapids-based institution's programs. But a Mount Mercy ad was on the bottom of the front page that day, noting the name change and expansion of programs. The ad was a boiled down version of the main information that was in the story.

We faced two situations: repeating information on the same page, plus raising a misconception that the ad and story were related.

Mount Mercy did not purchase any Gazette news coverage. Its transition to university status has been a newsworthy event and something we've covered on the front page previously. In fact, The Gazette broke the story about the shift to university status in May 2007 on the front page.

Also, The Gazette steadfastly does not sell specific stories.

We moved the Mount Mercy story to inside the paper because it still had value. We considered the degree to which the front-page ad influenced our decision to move the story. But when the final decision had to be made, we felt we had to keep the front page from being redundant, and we wanted to remove the appearance of conflict.

Had the story revealed dramatically new information we'd have kept it on the front page because the story would have taken a more rounded, critical approach than an ad, whose purpose was to deliver a specific message desired by its purchaser.

Front-page ads have become commonplace in newspapers in recent years but the concept is not new. Go back to the first years of The Gazette and other newspapers of eras gone by and you will find advertising all over the front page, mixed in with news items.

The ads provide a service, allowing advertisers the chance to target information of interest to consumers.

We will be diligent when ensuring that the news you read is a fair accounting of the events, trends, policies and community leaders that impact our readers. You expect it. Moreover, advertisers get their best value from us if you think the news you read in the newspaper can be trusted.

We think we've delivered, for example, with front page reports on the rift among Mercy Medical Center, Physicians' Clinic of Iowa and St. Luke's Hospital over Mercy's decision to build a cancer center. The controversy has been reported on several front pages. One front page story ran on Saturday, Aug. 21. The ad at the bottom of the page was purchased by Mercy Medical Center. St. Luke's Hospital had an ad in that space the previous Saturday, Aug. 14.

The difference from the Mount Mercy story: the hospital reports were complete, critical looks at the issue. If the news is front-page news, we'll put it there.

Update Fri. Sept. 3: I received one call on Sunday Aug. 29 from a person who read the column. Her comment: the stories are written in a fair manner and the ads are not a problem. I also got an e-mail later in the week from a reader critical of the decision, saying we had denied Mount Mercy a story because of the ad. I pointed out in a response the story was on page 3A.