Ad Age: Print Can Set The News Agenda - Well, Duh!

Advertising Age has an item on the Moveon.org versus Rudy ad pricing kerfuffle, which, in the end, appears to be much ado about nothing. More interesting for me is how they go out of their way to prop up the dead tree industry's worth - twice.

fourth graph: The buzz these ads generated certainly represents, from a media marketing standpoint, a show of strength by print.

fifteenth paragraph: Happily for publishers, moreover, the ad became the latest piece of evidence that print can set the news agenda.

I won't pretend that Print isn't significant when it comes to the news game today, that would be foolish. But I would add an additional point, or two. Being the topic of the news agenda is a far different thing than setting said agenda. And if it weren't for New Media, particularly blogs in this case, this particular agenda item would likely have never even been set. Duh!

sixth paragraph: A post on the blog Confederate Yankee soon noted the disparity. "While I'm fairly certain that nobody pays 'sticker' prices, 61% off seems a rather sweet deal," his post said. The New York Post picked up the story yesterday, running a piece headlined "Times Gives Lefties a Hefty Discount for 'Betray Us' Ad" and followed up with another article and an editorial today. "Citing the shared liberal bias of the group and the Times," the Post wrote, "one Republican aide on Capitol Hill speculated that it was the 'family discount.'"

Comments

[JoeBloe]

"...in the end, appears to be much ado about nothing."

Well, if you consider yet another blow to the credibility of the right-wing blog world (and politicians), then yeah, I guess there is, at least, nothing _new_ here...

[Jil In Pattaya]

Let me get this straight:

You are saying that if the blogs hadn't gone off half-cocked and spread factual misinformation regarding New York Times' advertising rates, then the agenda of discovering the CORRECT information regarding the New York Time's advertising rates would have never been undertaken.

Does that about sum it up?

That is a very interesting process you are describing here: Start of with a false accusation in order to cajole people into finding out what the truth actually is.

Yay! Go blogs!