By: Lucia Moses USA Today Began Trend In October
Gannett Co. Inc. of Arlington, Va., reiterated its policy allowing all 74 of its
dailies to run front-page ads. The issue was raised by company executives who were
meeting at a publishers' annual convention early in May.
USA Today began in October running one-inch strip ads across the bottom of its
front page after selling front-page ads on its section fronts for some time.
A 'handful' of Gannett's local papers currently run front-page ads, spokeswoman Tara
Connell said, adding that Gannett doesn't have a count of those papers. 'The policy
has always been, they were able to if they wanted to,' Connell said. 'Nothing's
changed.'
Journalists have long considered front-page ads a breach of a newspaper's editorial
independence, but ads have been creeping onto front pages at a scattering of papers.
Thomson Newspapers, for example, began allowing front-page ads in 1997.
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