State lottery ads pulled from California newspaper p.

By: M.L. Stein

THE CALIFORNIA STATE Lottery to newspapers: Don't mess with us if you want our advertising.
This appeared to be the message the agency sent out when it yanked its ads from the Sacramento News & Review after the paper ran a critical story about the lottery.
The alternative tabloid got its CSL ads through the California Newspaper Publishers Association, which operates a statewide, one-buy ad network for its members.
Pat Dilbeck, the manager of the CNPA network, said she was informed by J. Walter Thompson, the lottery's ad agency, that CSL would no longer advertise in the News & Review because of the "adverse" article.
The N&R cover piece, headed "What's the Deal? . . . The Lottery's Real Losers," by free-lancer R.V. Scheide, asserts that seven years after the lottery's inception, it is still "struggling to provide education funding at the levels originally promised."
The article continues by stating, "The pitch ? that the lottery is an entertaining way to raise money for education ? remains unchanged, as does the essential question critics of the lottery have been asking since before its inception: Should the state be sponsoring an activity that is known to adversely affect people with low incomes?"
Further on, Scheide says the lottery amounts to a "regressive tax that targets the working poor."
However, the story also carries a denial of that charge by lottery director Sharon Sharp. It also states that the lottery's slumping sales picked up in 1992 and that the game's latest gambit, Keno, "appears to be a resounding success."
"This was not a hit piece," said News & Review publisher Jeff von Kaenel. "They are being very petty."
Von Kaenel expressed concern over revenue loss from the quarter-page ad but said he was more concerned over the ban itself.
"We support the concept of the lottery," he commented.
N&R editor A. Lin Neumann fumed at what he termed the lottery's "retribution."
"It's certainly their right to pull an ad from us or any other newspaper but we didn't even get a call or letter from the lottery about their complaint," he said. "We would have given them an op-ed piece or printed an objecting letter from them, but I felt it was a fair article and we stand by it."
Neumann said that Scheide's story was published in other California alternative newspapers. He added that he knew of no other paper whose lottery ads were withdrawn over Scheide's story.
Sharp told E&P that she had not known about the action against the News & Review and had not ordered it. She referred questions to Susan Kossack, the lottery's marketing director, who said she made the decision to eliminate the weekly paper from the CNPA buy.
Kossack said the lottery has a policy of not advertising in free newspapers but made an exception because the News & Review was a CNPA member.
"But the decision to withdraw the advertising from that paper was because I did not feel it was an appropriate editorial environment for our advertising," she explained. "After all, when a newspaper prints a cover story with a headline about the lottery's 'real losers,' it's not exactly the best place for our ads."
Kossack, who once worked for the Sacramento Union, also termed parts of Scheide's story relating to the lottery's revenue projections as "inaccurate."
"We didn't make up the figures," Neumann retorted. "They were the result of our analysis. They [the lottery] never contacted us with any complaints. Our pages are always open to reply."