Kevin Marshall's America
The ad in question.
Quite a stink was raised by fellow blogger (and good friend) J. Eric Smith over some political adverts that have appeared on our blog pages yesterday.
His point is that yes, we accept that we are on this site and subject to whatever advertisements may appear, but political advertisements on one of the readers’ blogs could, depending on the blogger’s job titles or other affiliations, be potentially damaging to their reputation or worse.
My initial response was that he was overreacting, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought wow, not only is he right, but this is really kind of messed up.
Look, it’s one thing to look at this and say that, hey, it’s a Democratic candidate for Albany Surrogate’s Court. But what if it was someone I held a fierce ideological difference with? Would I be as comfortable if it was an ad for someone whose views I find not just incorrect, but straight out bad for my city, county, state, or country?
The answer is no. And while it’s obvious to many of us and some readers that it’s simply an advertisement and does not represent the views and opinions expressed on these pages, to many others that may not be the case.
To his credit, Blog Czar Mike Huber responded to Eric’s post and said that it hadn’t been brought to his attention until well into the afternoon and that he was looking into it. He also noted that the newsroom doesn’t get involved in advertising unless there’s a direct and obvious conflict.
The ad’s now gone, so it looks like someone’s either addressed the issue or the ad itself has simply expired. Update: though they were gone as of late last night, it looks like the ads have returned. Terrific.
So whoever’s responsible that may be reading this: get these damn things off our blogs, and let’s try to avoid this sort of confusion in the future. Advertisements for political candidates are a different animal entirely from something advertising a sale at Huck Finn’s warehouse. I’m not likely, for example, to have someone threaten me or my family over my views on the furniture sets available on the sales floor.
There’s a very real difference between ads for goods and services and ads for political candidates or causes. Common sense dictates they be handled differently, and I’d always assumed there’d be failsafes in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening.
Otherwise, I’ll just have to start airing my own ads. And we don’t want that.
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STALK ME
The “you tube” is simply hilarious! Thank you!
Great video!!
At 8:26am the ad still popped up on JES’s site.
My guess, without actually reading the TOS, is that TU citizen bloggers have no rights in terms of what sort of ads show up. That doesn’t mean they won’t pull back anyway.
Maybe if enough people complain something will be done. Perhaps a wildcat strike by the unpaid bloggers would get their attention.
Perhaps you starting your own ads is JUST what we want, NO! Need.
Let’s put it this way. When we moved into our house in Albany 16 years ago, my neighbor (who was a staunch Republican) warned me that if I put any election signs on my front lawn, depending on which candidate I supported, I could look forward to my property taxes either rising or falling.
I don’t need political candidates that I don’t support, or don’t even know what their platforms are, putting their campaign signs on my lawn. And by “lawn” I also mean the TU blog neighborhood.
I’m Chuck Miller, and I approved this message.
That political ad appeared when I pulled up your blog, J. Eric’s, and on my blog as well today @ 9:00 a.m.
When I pulled up your blog, I saw that same damn ad twice — once in your blog and over the right in the actual ad space.
I for one, as I’ve already said to JES, hate, hate, hate this time of year. I hate the mudslinging and constant advertising of these people. It’s to the point of obnoxious.
the ad is gone? it’s on the right side of your profile:)
Thanks for the heads up, guys; updated my post accordingly. When I composed it late last night, the ads were gone. Looks like they’re back again.
Le sigh.
If Kevin doesn’t mind some self promotion, the other day I put my thoughts about endorsements down on electronic paper. Don’t worry, there shouldn’t be (wait let met check)…Nope, no ads that could be harmful. The only thing I can gurarantee is that your reputation will by no means be helped by reading the post.
I agree with Chuck that the ‘lawn’ is much bigger than a patch of grass in front of my house.
Love the video.
I never pay attention to political ads. I agree that it is deplorable for the Times Union to automatically deploy ads endorsing a candidate to the blogs, which should more or less reflect the views of the author.
I’ve been reading the recent developments this morning. I’ve never read a post by this Jeric dude, but I don’t see what moving off of the TU blogs proves. The TU has given you a place to talk about whatever you want, whether you deserve it or not. Not being “in the know,” I’m sure there are limitations, but don’t you think your voice/words would be much more impactful/visible if you continued posting on the TU? That is if you want to take it so seriously.
My approach would be more along the lines of Kevin’s above post, because, hey, we’re all bloggers. All we do is type words into a box and sit back while people read them. Why not continue to have fun with it?
I’m just trying to understand…
Do people not understand how the internet works?
derryX – J. Eric’s (hopefully temporary) departure is more a matter of necessity. As he explains in his post yesterday, he works as the Executive Director of a non-profit under contract with a state agency. As such, he has to be careful so as to not be seen as being in violation of the Legislative & Political Activities Test.
Of course, we can say in this instance that it’s just a candidate for Surrogate’s Court and that it’s clearly a TU advertisement he had no prior knowledge of. So if it came up for review, he’d be able to present his case. The problem, however, is who wants to put themselves in that position?
And if the TU’s ad department is not providing the necessary filterse to differentiate between goods/services and political messages and advertisements, who’s to say that something far more compromising isn’t going to appear? It’s not as if we were given a heads up on this, or given any prior knowledge of ads. Which I don’t think we should; I do think, though, that a line should be drawn between political and non-political ads.
Because of my profession and connection to the church, I have to watch closely this type of thing. The ads appeared on my blog this morning. Though I don’t think the IRS is going raid my church on this, it is certainly one of those things that a policy should be set in place with the TU.
Yeah I get it.
Being a blogger and having a public voice poses risks, and while admittedly completely out of his control, this should be a risk he shouldn’t have to deal with, but a simple disclaimer at the top or bottom of each post would suffice.
Like your second paragraph implies, logic should prevail.
I guess I’ve personally witnessed worse things happen to bloggers…
2nd blog I’ve read today about this…
Really starting to think there might be an election coming up…
-gen
Kevin, Chuck, et al:
Looks like the “lawn” will be festooned with virtual pressed paper products until November.
Now when I pulled up your blog to read the additional comments, I see the ad 3 times — once along the top, once on the side with all the other ads and once in the actual blog. This is insanity!!!!!!
haha i wasnt expecting to laugh as hard as i did at that video. hilarious! :-P
I’ve never been a regular reader of Eric’s blog, but many of the insights and opinions he’s had over the years have been incredibly insightful; not just on his blog, but often in the comments he’s made on other blogs like yours.
That being said, this seems to be getting blown out of proportion quite a bit.
Is it inappropriate for the ads to be showing up? I think so, and I don’t think Eric’s wrong to be a bit troubled by ads of this nature showing up next to his words. As he put it, “politics is personal,” and I understand how he must feel to want a situation like that “fixed,” in a manner of speaking. He fixed it by leaving, going to “another sandbox to play in,” which is entirely his prerogative, and likely the decision I would have made.
Could these ads on his personal blog be considered a violation of the professional standards he’s posted? I’m not a lawyer, but that really seems to be a stretch; his blog is in no way related to the operations of his organization and that’s specifically what the IRS standards he linked to dealt with.
I think it was disingenuous for him to point at that as any reason for him to leave, particularly when I think it’s pretty clear to any casual reader that writers are not in control of the layout, ads, the annoying weather widget at the top that I swear is wrong 50% of the time, etc.
The professional excuse also flew out the window for me when he referred to the politician(s) advertising as “vile” in his goodbye post and made clear in a comment on the first post that it was “directed as much at the candidate as toward the Times Union advertising department” and asked rhetorically of the candidate “what else will you do for a vote?”
Regardless, it’s his prerogative to leave, and I wish him the best of luck; I’ll still look forward to his insight from time to time.
As a casual aside, leaving in the dramatic and very public way he did this morning probably gave Kate Doyle some of the best publicity yet this season; I’ve seen her ad more times in the past two hours thanks to him than I had the last three weeks combined.
The last time I saw this much uproar over an election, someone was trying to get their image on a bobblehead for a ValleyCats game.
Who was it who said you won’t go broke underestimating the sophistication of the American voter?
All good points, Karl, but we can’t give people too much credit in terms of logic or knowledge of how the ads work. I think people like us (me and Karl, et al) take for granted how computer literate we are in comparison to the general populace. Many of whom, in fairness, don’t read these blogs, but enough do to potentially create a problem.
All I know is that there is no way I can possibly vote for Cathryn “Kate” Doyle after seeing your ad, Kevin. ;)
You in trouble now, dude. I bet “Now I’m Cate” Doyle is gonna hire Tom Scholz’s Boston lawyers and kick your hiney, but hard.
Karl: Thanks for kind words and well wishes.
In re: the disingenuous part in regard to my work . . . I’m not a lawyer either (though I’m married to one), but as the leader of an organization, I feel I have a responsibility to set standards, and if I judge this be okay, then it becomes harder for me to not consider slightly grayer political situations okay. I don’t want my words to have political ads atop them, and I don’t want to ever have to answer a question in the future about it. It seems the safest course to not put up new content now that my page has been turned into a political advertisement.
I would also note that in my original post, I cited that as a part of the equation as to why I quit, but I also cited my own personal distaste for this type of campaigning, so I am not uplifting my professional concern over my personal concern.
In re: directing the post at the candidate . . . I’d love it if the folks whose banners are being posted on my blog would reply publicly as to why they think this okay, or if they DO think it’s okay, as the Senate campaigns I called out in an earlier post did. The TU Advertising department made what I consider to be an inappropriate decision . . . but I think the campaigns did the same thing . . .
Finally, the “vile” comment was made by asking other bloggers to imagine the most repellent politician they could picture, be it a left wing, right wing, whatever one . . . if you’re imagining such a person, the word “vile” is apt. I wasn’t calling the folks actually advertising on my blog vile.
Eric,
I really don’t understand what the campaigns did wrong in this case. Name recognition is one of the toughest parts of local elections, and I think it’s only wise that they’d want to advertise on what is one of the most visited websites in the area. Any questionable decisions were on the part of the TU departments responsible for ad placement, and even in that case I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt; ads can be run and administered through some pretty complicated means that could take some time to correct, or could easily allow for oversights like the one I think we had here. Furthermore, I doubt that the TU could just immediately pull advertisements that had already been paid for or agreed upon due to some fine print in there.
I don’t disagree with your decision at all, and I’d likely have come to the same conclusion you did to move to an ad-free environment out of preference. What I suppose it comes down to is how you think everything went down: it seems to likely a series of unfortunate decisions, misunderstandings, and oversights which, from what I’ve seen, has now been corrected in a rather timely manner given how many cooks there were in the kitchen on this issue. I’m not so sure it comes down to questioning editorial integrity, but that’s just me.
It’s unfortunate that you’ll be leaving the group of great writers on here… however, in the words of Vonnegut: “so it goes.” In the end you’re still going to be writing and doing what you love doing and we’re still going to be reading – more power to you, especially with the music reviews (you’re one of maybe four people I know that even knew who the Broken Bells were earlier this year).
Your best performance yet. Revealing Kate for who she really is. You are too funny.
Even better, when it comes to revealing Kate . . . is reality: http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/trial-procedure-judges/11895524-1.html
Or here . . . http://www.scjc.state.ny.us/Determinations/D/doyle.htm
So, you know, experienced, fair, and compassionate are nice . . . but is that the whole story?
That’s why I don’t want that paid political crap on pages that I write.
Once again, Kevin, you’re an evil genius.
I am totally voting for Kevin Marshall this election.
Love the video! I just referenced Huck Finn’s in my comment on JES’s blog. Oh no, I’m starting to think like Kevin Marshall.
I posted a comment on Eric’s blog, but I want to give Kevin’s crowd a chance to hear from me. It’s long. I apologize. Maybe someday I’ll have my own blog.
Unless you’re living under a rock, you know the newspaper in, dustry has been decimated by declining numbers for both circulation and advertising. At the same time, readers expect to get their online news, and news Web sites, for free. Uh-oh. So who’s gonna pay for the Web site? Advertisers. While many readers view ads as intrusive annoyances, I see them and say, gee, thanks, Mr. Advertiser, for helping pay our bills and keeping me and my colleagues employed.
With regard to political ads, the advertiser (possibly the campaign manager) signed up for a ‘run of site’ ad buy, which means we promise to deliver an agreed-upon number of page views by a set date (next Tuesday, I think). That’s why you see Cathryn Doyle’s ads all over our site. The ads are displayed wherever we have open inventory to meet the magic number of impressions.
This is old news: We’ve had political ads on our blogs for years. And being a TU blogger has always been a compromise: you get some benefit (an audience) at some cost (it’s an advertising-supported site).
I think most readers clearly separate content from ads. No one holds a reporter/columnist responsible for the advertisers that wrap around his/her copy. I spoke to a Tea Party blogger today and he said his free blog (not on the TU platform) occasionally displays ads for Barbara Boxer!
I wish we could have come to some agreement on this content vs. ad issue before Eric’s fast and furious departure. I’ll continue to meet with Advertising to work toward an understanding of what’s best for our readers, advertisers and bloggers.
I have the highest regard for J. Eric Smith. He is a man of integrity and he is a brilliant writer. He volunteered to blog on timesunion.com for the past four years. He gave us lots of stories and poetry. We gave him lots of visibility and readers. It’s a trade that benefited both Eric and the TU. He moves on. We move on. I wish him much success. Sad to see him go.
PS. When I run for office, I’m hiring Kevin Marshall as my dirty campaign consultant.
I couldn’t agree more with Michael.
Since Kevin’s post has little to do with the differences I see between Eric and myself, I’m moving my comments over there.
In the mean time, since I’ll serve a contra-point the Eric as far as candidates go: http://www.albanycitizenone.com/2010/09/surrogate-court-forum-over-at-apl.html
Bon Appetite.
Re: I wish we could have come to some agreement on this content vs. ad issue before Eric’s fast and furious departure. I’ll continue to meet with Advertising to work toward an understanding of what’s best for our readers, advertisers and bloggers.
It had to be fast because I was so furious . . . and, frankly, I’m still pretty steamed about it.
Community bloggers ARE different from paid reporters and columnists. We’re closer to the folks who write letters to the editor, which run on the (advert-free) editorial pages than we are to anything else in the print paper.
I understand the economics of the model, and I have accepted commercial adverts on my page as a necessary evil to support that model, but I believe that political advertising is a radically different beast, and shouldn’t be treated the same ways that tire commercials are.
Again, I’m probably wrong, naive, over-sensitive, cranky, whatever about that . . . but I felt absolutely violated in having my personal blog turned into a campaign advertisement, first and most obviously for Doyle, though now I see other candidates appearing as well.
So I appreciate your continued meetings with advertising. I think it’s important that as this enterprise goes forward. I’m hopeful that I’ll return to posting here after election season ends, but to some extent, that will hinge on how advertising responds to the concerns you are carrying to them. I’ll be watching closely and with great interest accordingly.
What I fail to understand is this – if you want an ad-free envoirnment why don’t you use a free blog site like blogger?
Let’s see, you like being read! So you use the Times Union forum – it is not the candidate’s fault they are on your blog, it’s your hosts – point your finger where in the direction where it should go.
Joshua - Please read the actual blog post. I didn’t point fingers at the candidates.