Is The New York Times taking down the wall between editorial and advertising?

As long ago as 2009, Natalie Pompilio, writing  in the American Journalism Review, decried the blurring of the traditional dividing line–the Chinese Wall, it's sometimes called–between editorial and advertising. When that happens, Pompilio asked, "does credibility take a hit?"

The latest example of a crack in that wall came yesterday, in a New York Times Magazine story on base-jumping. It's a sport in which thrill-seekers wearing webbed wingsuits and parachutes jump off of cliffs and soar through the sky before pulling their parachutes. Or, as the jumper featured in the story said, "It's more like a suicide than a sport."

The story ran for seven pages, including the double-truck opening spread. Only one ad appeared in the story–a full-pager sponsored by the investment adviser Raymond James. The ad copy begins this way: "Let's just say base-jumping will never make an appearance on our bucket list. Or any other list for that matter. We don't doubt that the adrenaline rush that accompanies such a stunt is exhilarating. However, as a firm that always has your well-being in mind, we tend to err firmly on the side of caution…"

Here's how the ad appears in print:

You won't see this online; I scanned the web copy and couldn't find Raymond James alongside the story. But it's quite obvious, in print, that the advertising side knew what the editorial side was planning, giving Raymond James the opportunity to tailor its advertising to the story. It's also more than a little ghastly; the story is about a man who died while base-jumping. In a tweet, Raymond James acknowledged the impropriety of its ad, which it claimed was a coincidence:

A coincidence? How often does "base jumping" come up in advertising copy? I'm still willing to bet that somebody on the advertising side got a look at the story–but apparently it wasn't a good enough look.

The issue that prompted Pompilio's concern in the AJR was a front-page ad in the Los Angeles Times "that could easily have been confused for an actual news article. Placed prominently in the left-hand column below the fold, an ad for the police drama 'Southland' carried NBC's peacock logo and was labeled 'advertisement,' but it was written in story form as if a reporter had accompanied the police officer who is the show's main character on a ride-along," Pompilio wrote.

After collecting many opinions, she concluded that transparency is essential–readers must know what is journalism and what is an ad. And readers need to know and be reminded of news organizations' ethics policies.

In the case of the Times infringement yesterday, it's transparent enough–readers understand that the ad is not part of the story. But what about the Times practices on coordinating ads and editorial copy? I don't know what its current practices are, and I doubt that most readers do either.

New-media advocates often argue that this old way of doing things, in which neither the advertising department or the editorial department knows what the other is doing, must fall to the realities of doing business in the digital era, as a recent post at the website Newspaper Death Watch makes clear. But what, if anything, should replace it?

If we set aside principles for a moment and look at this ad in the Times magazine, it's hard to see where it does much harm. The story does not promote a product made by the advertiser, the nightmare scenario that gave rise to the wall. You could argue, I suppose, that the story advocates caution, the very thing Raymond James is touting in its ad, but that would be stretching things.

The conflict was clearer in April when TIME magazine published a long story on cancer treatment that repeatedly plugged the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and then ran a full-page ad for M.D. Anderson alongside the story.

Journalists generally like to be paid, and if the outfits they are writing for don't make money, the writers and editors won't be paid. We get it. But credibility is important–perhaps more important now than ever, when so much news comes from websites that spring from moist soil overnight. Some news websites are clearly selling access to their "editorial" content. Others are trying to establish some standards of fairness, and some independence from the potentially corrupting influence of advertising dollars. 

The Times might want to dismantle its Chinese Wall. But it should, at the very least, tell us what it's doing, and why.

-Paul Raeburn