New York Times Gets Cozy With Maria Sharapova

What Happens When Ads Get Too Close For Comfort

Dominating the five-ish pages The New York  Times devoted to sports today (notice I didn't say sports section), the first page is dominated by news of Maria Sharapova calling it quits from tennis at the not-so-ripe age of 32 because injuries and constant pain did her in.

Most of the page, as the Times is prone to do nowadays to cover up its paucity of sports copy, is a striking photo of Sharapova, at once frustrated and content. The next page jumps to a chronology of her remarkable career and the rest of the article by Christopher Clarey. All well and good.

However, immediately adjacent to the jump page is a Nike ad, which, even if you have only a passing knowledge of Sharapova, or just read the preceding spread, you know it's her.

The Clarey article has an interview with Sharapova and the photo was taken by a Times freelancer. But the ad right next to the article? While it may not have been the intent, the end result looks like an advertorial for Sharapova's swan song, in effect paid for by a five-figure Nike ad buy. It would have been much more appropriate--and effective--for the ad to go on the back page of the section, which is mostly taken up by sports news.

The news and business sides of the paper aren't supposed to get involved with each other. But when their worlds collide, somebody has to step in and referee, lest there appears to be some collusion between editorial and advertising.

More curious is that the Times ad is markedly different than another version circulating on the web:

Certainly looks more deliberate than a printing oopsie. This one was just for the Gray Lady--very gray, given the resolution.

It should be noted that the Times didn't have the exclusive on Sharapova. That went to Vanity Fair and Vogue, which had a first-person account from the five-time Grand Slam winner about why she was hanging it up. Still, it doesn't appear she gave an interview to anyone else except the Times, which makes no mention of the magazine missive. That's no knock on Clarey, who has done a more-than-workmanlike job covering tennis and other sports for the Times for decades. It's just a shame that his exclusive is sullied by the impression that Nike and the Times ad reps got a little too cozy.

And because you don't want to zoom in, here's the ad copy.

They wanted you to smile more.
They wanted you to be more polite.
They wanted you to scream a little softer.
They wanted you to be less aggressive when you won.
They wanted you to walk away when you made mistakes.
But instead of just becoming the player the game wanted?
You became the player it needed.

Vintage Nike. A good ad, just one that was not in a good place.

The Death Star of Newspapers Not So Deadly?

Alden May Finally Be Realizing When Enough is Enough
An interesting take by Rick Edmonds of Poynter on how Alden Global Capital, the rapacious venture capitalists who gobble up newspaper assets whole and then spit out their desiccated remains, has essentially hit a pause button on its plundering. At least for now.

The thinking, according to Edmonds, is that Alden has stripped away the muscle from its properties and is momentarily content to look at the bones.

Since the company does not entertain questions, it’s a guess why. More reductions could be on the way later this year. Or Alden may have calculated that it has reached the minimum number of staffers necessary to put out a news report people will pay for, now that it is revving up a drive for paid digital subscriptions.


If so, there's a dangerous flaw in that model, one others like Gannett haven't realized or didn't care too much to rectify. Namely, it's hard to convince people to pony up for digital subs when there's nothing worth paying for. If all a paper does is re-purpose what little print content it has for the web without any value add, the ennui readers will have for the print version will infect the digital edition.Most papers out of the Times-Post-Journal orbit still pay too little attention to the web product to make it worth paying for, certainly not to the point where it can convince people to shed the more-expensive-to-produced-and-distribute print version. 

There's a reason why print circulation has cratered. There's a reason there hasn't been a corresponding digital migration.So, instead you have a company like Gannett slapping a $2.50 price tag on a 16-page edition of The Journal News and wondering why its daily circulation is down to 24,000, when it was 160,000 back when I was a reporter there in the late eighties.The end of print, or at least curtailing the number of print days at most publishers, seems a foregone conclusion at this point. It's already happened in Pittsburgh, at many Advance Media titles, like the Post-Standard in Syracuse and soon the Saturday editions at McClatchy titles. Monday papers would likely be next to go.

Which brings us back to Alden. What reason is there to expect it's capable of investing in digital if it can shake the print habit? I don't think the remaining reporters in places like Denver, San Jose or St. Paul have any expectations of that happening. Then again....Alden is all about extracting value. Maybe the best way for that to happen is by actually injecting some cash into their digital side, so the papers become more profitable and, more importantly, valuable. That's valuable, as in attracting a buyer.

Could Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon Shiong, e.g., find a reinvigorated San Jose Mercury-News and its beleaguered sister papers in the Bay Area irresistible? Yes, Alden appears to bask in its reputation of predatory buyer. But making money is often more about knowing when to get out rather than staying in. You just need to have something worth selling first.