Throughout the recent City Council At-Large campaign, the Uptown Messenger has run a series of paid advertisements for candidate Stacy Head. The ads appear with such persistence that we've come to think of the publication, which specializes in covering "Faubourg Stacy" anyway, as the Stacy Daily.
There's nothing especially wrong with this, of course. Political candidates pay for advertising space in newspapers, on television and radio, and on websites all the time. But the Messenger has developed a peculiar ad delivery mechanism where the paid spots are published as posts the same way their actual news content is.
The ads are clearly labeled, of course, so they aren't quite as underhanded as the TV news practice of passing off sponsor-produced "video news releases" as actual news content. But bleeding them into the regular feed like this is clearly inspired by the "advertorials" and other forms of slightly deceptive advertising that appear frequently in all sorts of print and online publications. The Messenger is at least telling us what they're doing. But that doesn't mean what they're doing is completely honest. On some level, by blurring the lines like this, they're trying to fool us.
And yet today's entry does this so well that it actually crosses back over into the realm of useful informative content. It does this in two ways. First, the advertorial reminds us that early voting for the At-Large runoff is currently underway. Election Day itself is set for April 21.
Secondly, because the advertorial is dressed up as a "recommended French Quarter Fest schedule" provided by the Head campaign, it provides a handy guide for deciding where not to be if you wish to avoid encountering Ms. Head or her minions during the festival. And so we all are better informed both as voters and as individuals looking to enjoy the weekend. And we have this fake news item to thank for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment