Amazon Prime Day is not a GD news event

Just sayin.

Let them buy ads.

 

GD, I agree.

I didn't think Gannett could spread its legs wide enough for the rumored ginormous Bezos rooster to achieve insertion.

 

Oh, hell, ever lived in an area when an Ikea opens? It's like there's a segment about it on every newscast in town for three days.

 

Ha. When I was ME of a small daily 30-odd years ago, during my final year Wal-Mart (then correct usage) put on a full-court press to build a store in the area -- to be precise, to build a store just outside the city limits so as to avoid city taxes and zoning ordinances, and also be granted special dispensation to hook into the city's water and sewer systems.

In order to get this, Wal-Mart had to bulldoze the city council, the township board and I believe the county commission as well, so it was definitely in their interest to create the impression they had overwhelming public support.

So they spent several months buttering up our ad staff (at our dinky paper the ad manager was also the GM) with a steady stream of happy happy ads and also pumping ME, the managing editor , for wonderful feature stories just about every day on all the wondrous things Wal-Mart was gonna do for the community (they were gonna support downtown merchants!!) as well as a constant flow of stories on the wonderful (ALL-AMERICAN!) products available at the already-existing Wal-Marts some 30-40 miles away.

I tried to throw the brakes on the whole shebang to some extent but our GM the ad manager informed me flat out that Wal-Mart was already our fourth biggest advertiser by line space and by revenue, so we were gonna grin and run the stories.

I drew the line at sheer product placement and puffery -- I had read up fairly extensively on Wal-Mart's attitude toward local newspaper advertising. But Mr. GM was absolutely convinced they were gonna run nonstop local ads and inserts once the store was open. They told him so, he assured me.

I moved on to another paper (a midsize daily about 40 miles away) just as the decision came down: it was approved, as was fairly obvious was going to happen, and sure enough they built their shiny new store just across the city limits.

The new ME, replacing me, was a somewhat more pliable kid, in her second job out of college, eager to please, so she started running a nonstop flow of essentially everything Wal-Mart wanted.

This went on for a couple months until Wal-Mart got the new store built and opened. Shockingly enough, pretty much on the day after their grand opening celebration, Wal-Mart canceled all their local newspaper ad buys. Cold.

All that was left was the hometown mom and pop department stores and regional grocery stores -- which would all be put out of business in the next year or so by Wal-Mart.

 

Amazon Prime Day Has Become Too Commercialized

 

Amazon sucks, abuses its workers. Prime subsidizes shipping and forces sellers to keep prices high. Also, Amazon paid practically nothing in federal income taxes since 2018.

 

Hell even the NY Times got in on the act with a Sunday deep dive pegged to the day. It really makes no sense, unless its newspaper and other media executives continuing to just check what "trending" on social media to figure out their 1A.

I can "defend" newspapers covering significant advertisers and/or the pet causes they support. Newspapers can't afford "ethics" anymore. Giving away advertising to an entity that is competing with people in your community who do? Madness.

 

Speaking of Black Friday .... film at 11.

Is it helpful or hurtful to Walmart etc. to run video of people crashing through the doors and trampling each other at the opening bell? Followed by a happy guy leaving with an 80-inch flat screen and a mom with the latest video game?

 

THE LATEST NEWS ON NJ.COM HOMEPAGE. NOT AN AD

Wawa’s new drink combines beer and lemonade, just in time for summer

 

Ha! I got that release at 10:30 this morning. At least they re-wrote the lede.