"No on 66/67" spadea as it
appeared on Sunday

There has been no shortage of advertising in advance of next Tuesday's special election on tax measures 66 and 67. Some of that advertising has been controversial, but this week, the controversy has surrounded one of the media outlets that accepted that advertising.

On Sunday and Wednesday, The Oregonian's front page was wrapped by a spadea, a double-sided format that covers half of the front page and all of the "A" section's back page. Below The Oregonian's nameplate and a "paid advertisement" disclaimer are the large, bold words, "The Oregonian's editorial board urges voters to VOTE NO on Measures 66 and 67."

Pat McCormick, spokesperson for Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes, says his organization inquired about the spadea before The Oregonian's January 4 "vote no" editorial. At the time, however, the paper's advertising department told them that The Oregonian did not accept political ads in the spadea format. After the editorial, McCormick says lobbyist Mark Nelson had the campaign's media-buying firm make another effort to secure the spadea, which they were successful at doing.

But while The Oregonian's endorsement was what prompted the campaign's second push for a spadea, publisher Chris Anderson repeatedly stressed to OMC that the paper's decision to run the ad "had nothing to do with the endorsement — not at all."

Anderson says that he and then-president Pat Stickel decided in December to accept political spadeas in the current election, before they made an endorsement, and he says they made the decision without discussing their editorial position. He says he does not know whether there had previously been a policy not to accept such ads.

But Mario van Dongen, director of sales and marketing at The Oregonian, says that there was indeed such a policy, and that the policy was his own. He says that the sales department would have known of the policy if someone had inquired with them, but that it was not a written company position that the president or publisher would necessarily have known about. He says that Stickel received an inquiry about a political ad on the spadea while Van Dongen was away, so, after consultation with Anderson, the decision to accept it was made without him.

Van Dongen opposed political spadeas because "a political ad might take advantage of the placement and make it look like it's a newspaper statement." He says controlling the content of a political ad is difficult, because it can become a slippery slope toward censoring it. McCormick says the negotiations they did have included matters such as the placement of the "paid advertisement" disclaimer, as well as an agreement that The Oregonian's logo would only appear on pages that also included a summary of the paper's editorial statement.

In a publisher's note that ran in Sunday morning's opinion section, Anderson wrote that the paper is "willing to make the front-page spadea available to advertisers on both sides of these ballot measures, subject to our final approval."

Elana Guiney, spokesperson for the Yes campaign, says her organization is considering such an ad. But she says that, "especially in Sunday's edition, it was hard to tell at first that [the spadea] was an advertisement." The second spadea on Wednesday was similar, but "paid advertisement" appeared in bold, a change that Anderson says he specifically requested. The bottom of each page also included the words, "Paid for by Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes," a disclosure that only appeared on the back page of Sunday's ad. Van Dongen says that that change was also made for clarity.

McCormick says the ads were technically purchased by the Northwest Grocery Association as an in-kind contribution to his organization. Disclosures about who paid for an ad have not been required by state law since a 2001 change by the state legislature, and a spokesperson for the Secretary of State's office says the disclosure that did run is ok, regardless of who specifically made the payment.

Additionally, as of this year, campaigns no longer have to disclose who they advertise with or for how much, as The Portland Mercury reported after trying to find the price of the No campaign's spadea purchase. Northwest Grocery Association president Joe Gilliam says it is his organization's policy not to comment on their expenditures during a campaign, while Anderson says that his paper does not disclose its rate sheet.

Illustration of a spadea ad,
from The Oregonian

Oregon Media Central, however, has confirmed figures that were first reported by progressive political website BlueOregon: Sunday spadeas cost $24,950, while weekday spadeas are $19,750. Anderson says that the No campaign paid the standard rate.

Could that kind of revenue save some staffers from the intevitable layoff that Sandy Rowe warned about in a November memo, before she herself retired as editor in order to save the paper money? When the first front-page spadea ran in August, current editor Peter Bhatia wrote that "ads like these pay for the news staff." Anderson would only add that The Oregonian gets most of its revenue from advertising, and that "we are adjusting our expenses to match up with our revenue."

Tim Gleason, dean of the University of Oregon's School of Journalism, says that, while he has "absolutely no doubt" that there is no connection between The Oregonian's editorial position and the paper's decision to accept the spadea, he believes that the ad is a "symbol of the degree to which financial pressures are influencing news decision-making." He warns that "the credibility of any news organization is challenged when the line between advertising and editorial content is blurred," something he says he sees "in all mediums." He says that Sunday's spadea is "a very visible symbol of that trend."

While Anderson agrees that blurring the line between advertising and editorial content would challenge a paper's credibility, he does not agree that the No campaign's spadeas have done so. "Not when it's clearly marked as a paid ad." He says that the paper's willingness to accept spadeas from the Yes campaign is more evidence that that line is distinct. Anderson, who taught journalism ethics at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School in the fall of 2008, adds, "I think I'm informed."

The Oregonian will revisit whether to accept spadeas in future political campaigns. Anderson adds, "It would have been much easier if the first ad had been from the supporters."

UPDATE (1/22, 10:21 am): A pronoun has been changed to Van Dongen's name to clarify that it was he who was away when the decision to accept political spadeas was made.