The Miami Herald began running advertising on the front page of its business section on Tuesday, joining newspapers such as the New York Times, Boston Globe, Orlando Sentinal in beginning to sell space on its business section front in an attempt to increase revenue.
The ad is stripped across the bottom of the page, and it’s for Chub Cay Club, a real estate development in the Bahamas.
The stories directly above the ad were about a local hospital suffering financial difficulties and a Cuban exile group offering loans in Cuba, so I didn’t see any problem with the ad in terms of hurting the editorial content.
Just to repeat, I actually have no problem with the ads on the front page of the business section unless — and that’s a pretty big “unless” — the ad calls into question the objectivity of a story or the ethics of the reporter. For example, I would have had a problem if one of the stories in the business section of the Herald today was about real estate developments in the Bahamas.
The Herald, along with other former Knight-Ridder papers, is now owned by McClatchy. I had not heard of any other McClatchy papers selling ads on the front of the biz section.
