We would have thought that the Detroit Free Press had had its fill of journalistic scandal for a while, in the wake of the kerfluffle over star columnist Mitch Albom writing about stuff that had not happened, and publisher Carol Leigh Hutton subsequently apologizing.
We would have been wrong.
Take a look at this. What you’re looking at are the front pages of yesterday’s Free Press and its purported competitor, the Detroit News. (The two papers have separate owners — Gannett owns the News, Knight-Rider the Free Press — and separate editors, but they’re produced under a joint operating agreement that allows them to share advertising revenues.)
What’s the deal here? Suffused by a sudden rush of patriotism as Memorial Day weekend approached, two choked-up editors each decided to wrap their newspaper in the trappings of a United States flag?
Well, no. Nothing quite that uplifting. The flag is actually an advertisement for Marshall Fields, the largest department store in Detroit and environs, which itself is hoping for a big weekend of holiday shoppers.
Yep, they sold the front page. Both of them.
There may be a precedent for a capitulation as crassly commercial as this one, but if there is, our minds have mercifully blocked it out.
–S.L.
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.