News vs. advertising

I’ll come right out with this one: I’m not a fan of ads that masquerade as news.

I think readers deserve to know the difference between commercial newspaper space and the space we devote to news. That’s why whenever there’s a question as to whether an ad looks too much like news, we put the words “Paid Advertisement” on the top of the ad.

Or we should. This week, a two-page spread for “Golden State quarters” from a company called the World Reserve Monetary Exchange accidentally lost its advertising disclaimer when it was resized in our production room. To make matters worse, the entire package mimicked the news so much, with its headlines, graphics and bylined story, that it confused some readers, who thought our newsroom staff had written the copy.

One man said he thought we’d been duped into believing what we wrote — that we had only 48 hours to get a piece of a private hoard of never-circulated quarters.

Another, a local coin collector, said we should know that we can buy the same Golden State quarters from the U.S. Mint for less than what this private company charges. And he was pretty sure that anyone who bought the novelty coins wasn’t going to get rich, as the ad suggests.

So I did what any good journalist would do and called the 800 number on the ad to find out more about what the World Reserve Monetary Exchange was selling — the rolls of quarters, “available only to Californians.”

The woman who answered the phone first asked for my ZIP code, to prove I was a California resident. While she checked to see if 95376 is truly in California, I pulled out my calculator. If I bought a roll of 25 quarters for laundry next door at the Bank of America, I would shell out $6.25. But these special quarters, the woman on the phone told me, would cost $21.10 for a roll, including processing and postage. She preferred to sell me 10 rolls, she said, and I’d better hurry with my decision, because the offer was only good for another 48 hours.
I made a mental note to check on that offer after two days.

Now, I’m no expert on the value of coins — circulated, never-circulated, golden or not-so-golden — and I haven’t the faintest idea what would happen to those values if I were to bury a roll of these special quarters for my great-great-grandchildren.

But I do know about ethics. Which brings me back to separating news from advertising. The Society of Professional Journalists, an organization that urges conscientious journalists to seek truth and report it, tells us that we should always distinguish news from paid advertising — “and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.”

I’m sorry that we didn’t do that Wednesday on pages 12 and 13 of the Tracy Press. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of credibility in a newspaper, and I’m afraid we lost some of our value this week