Hold the front page... for an ad

What's the second biggest current debate in America's media world? Never mind Blacksburg: putting ads on your front page is the issue of the moment.

Yes: yielding up even a few centimetres of editorial space on the front is somehow viewed as a massive issue, demanding many column inches of introspective coverage in the transition process. Rupert Murdoch has just done it on his New York Post, with appropriate hand-wringing, but maybe the best truth-in-journalism-and-no-bullshit way came the other day from Phil Bronstein, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle

'We had discussions about it,' he said. 'It's a hard case to make that you shouldn't do this when you're in as big a financial hole as we are.'

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