Shame on News Limited for allowing the news photo on the front page of The Advertiser newspaper on Saturday of the new South Australian Premier to be covered by a stuck-on ad for X-Lotto. As the newsagent who shared the photo with me noted, this is disgraceful.
If the ad is more important than the photo then why not just sell advertising space rather than disrespecting the photo? This placement gets the ad revenue and lets News Limited make a political statement. While people at News may say that this was not their intention, it would certainly be reasonable for people seeing the ad to take the handling of the photo as commentary by the newspaper.
The circulation people at The Advertiser would be unhappy if a newsagent blocked the front page of the newspaper in a newsagency. What they are doing to their own product is the same thing. It tells newsagents that seeing the main story of the day is not that important to selling newspapers.
I want to see newspapers and their editorial content respected. These stuck-on ads leave me wondering if publishers allow it now because they care less today about the medium than previously and want to extract as much revenue as possible as long as it lasts.
Are these stuck on via machine as part of the print run or by hand? If by machine, there may be limitations of where it could be put, although reading the various posts here, they are quite random in location thus suggesting hand placement. If so, it may be a directive to obscure faces, promotions etc or just the political leanings of the sticker placer. I agree it does distract from the paper and there is often enough advertising across the top bar without having to resort to this, though if a customer is willing to pay….