The “article” about two empty nesters finding a home they liked in Tillsonburg looked like a newspaper feature.
“Tillsonburg ends a five-year search,” the headline said. “Quiet town met couple’s needs.”
The 1,000-word piece boxed with two colour photos and a map carried a byline. It ran in the main news section last Saturday, atop page A22.
The type resembled the Star’s trademark font, but the lines were spaced farther apart than usual.
Star reader Sir Mark L. Alter of North York concluded it was a paid ad, but found the layout confusing.
“I thought you had a policy that states if copy or layout might be misconstrued as editorial content, it must be properly labelled as an ad,” he told the ombud. “I think you have failed here. This looks like Toronto Star copy.”
The reader was right more so than he realized when he phoned.
Not only was there no ad label, the empty-nesters “article” had first appeared Aug. 9 as an editorial feature in New in Homes.
Dennis Morgan, assistant managing editor in charge of special sections, was upset at the blurring of lines between editorial and advertising content.
“I am really annoyed when I see this, and really concerned that it might happen again,” Morgan said.
He noted that not only was the ad copy “a complete, total lift” from the feature, the headlines were identical.
Morgan said he has worked for years to strengthen the editorial content of special sections, and raise them beyond the level of advertorial.
“This kind of thing endangers our credibility. We don’t want freelancers submitting pieces that were written with a view to running as ads.”
“I had no idea of the ramifications. I thought I was merely reselling the story,” said Judy Liebner, the freelancer who wrote the recycled Tillsonburg feature.
“No red flag went up.”
A remorseful Liebner said she believed the Star had no problem with her story making a second debut in an ad.
She resold the piece to the developer, thinking it would be properly labelled. To her dismay, there was another surprise. The ad ran with her byline still on the piece.
In fact, the article belonged to Liebner. New in Homes had paid the freelancer only for first-use rights.
She can’t be faulted: the Star accepted and published the ad.
Jeff Fry, group advertising director for New in Homes, acknowledged the ad should have been labelled. Also, typographical changes should have been ordered to make it distinctive.
At a minimum, why weren’t those things done?
Clearly, it seems there was a communications breakdown among all the players over copyright and layout issues.
Worse, it seems the ad got into the paper without adequate scrutiny, having been delivered to the Star after office hours. “The material went in without anybody (from the advertising) department seeing it,” Fry explained.
Nor was Morgan or anyone else in editorial asked whether the recycled story might pose problems.
It’s ironic.
Dailies take pains to separate editorial and advertising operations, for the sake of journalistic credibility. Yet church and state do need to talk sometimes.
Regrettably, that didn’t happen here.
