When working on newspapers, layout and design folks keep an eye out (or at least try to) for poor story placement next to advertisements.
Hypothetical: Woe is the advertising salesman who sees a half-page ad for his client, Hypothetical Air, next to a story on a major air crash.
(In fact, more often than not, when there is a plane crash, airlines will call to remove their ads from publication the following day.)
This can happen online, as you see in the above photo. A nationwide, chainwide web takeover ad for Ford Canada, wrapped around the Ottawa Citizen’s website. Unfortunately, high up on the same website was a story about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who was given two weeks to vacate his seat over a conflict-of-interest violation.
I was able to grab this screengrab before we moved the Ford story. Before you cry foul over editorial content being sidelined for advertising, let me say this in our defence: The story was a day old, and could have easily been bumped out of our rotator for news value.
Peter Simpson, the Citizen’s Arts Editor-at-Large, saw this post and recalled his ‘mugshot’ which was unfortunately juxtaposed next to a not-so-great headline. Here’s the image:
Thanks to Peter, who is and never has been (to my knowledge) a robbery suspect, for this photo.
This was an honest mistake and it can happen. After all we are all humans and should not fret over small professional issues and make them bigger than our personal selves.