Will potheads save the newspaper industry? No, I’m not referring to the current crop of J-school grads, I’m sure they could pass any drug test if given enough time to study for it. I’m talking about the readers.
Anyone who has read through the comments section of any newspapers’ website would reasonably suspect that most of the writers were under the influence of something. The level of anger and hostility displayed by the comment writers however, would suggest that they were ingesting something stronger than pot.
Vitriolic commenters aside, I can’t help but notice that my local newspapers have begun to resemble a visitor’s guide to Amsterdam. In a time of declining ad revenues, the marijuana dispensaries are splashing out money for full-page, full-color ads week after week. And there sure are a lot of them. Who knew there were that many sick people in Sacramento County?
The Sacramento News & Review has even started publishing a big, stapled pull-out section devoted almost entirely to ads for medical marijuana. Frankly, that’s not surprising. SN&R lets their writers use the F-word in their articles. SN&R would probably accept ads from crack cocaine dealers if they thought they could get away with it.
What is surprising is that The Sacramento Bee has quietly added its own weekly, pull-out pot section. The horror! A family newspaper, bearing a mascot drawn by Walt Disney himself, is now publishing ads for schedule one narcotics? I suppose Scoopy shall have to be drawn holding a bong in the paper’s banner from now on.
It is odd really that it has taken The Bee as long as it has to begin accepting ads from the dispensaries. It’s not as if they have some strict moral code about what sorts of ads they accept. I’ve seen ads for patent medicines and all manner of dubious cure-alls in the pages of The Bee. And don’t get me started on the classified ads. Tarot card readers, "massage" parlors and ads from people seeking anonymous sex have paid for a lot of ink down at 2100 Q street.
Even some of their legitimate ads are distasteful. I remember ( I should say: "can’t forget") one ad that The Bee ran for weeks; it was a full-page ad for a diabetes clinic and it featured a picture of a foot ravaged by the disease. It was, of course, rendered in full-color and life-sized. I mean, who wouldn’t want to sit down to breakfast, open the paper and look at lurid pictures of a fat, rotting foot? The sight of that foot is enough to send anyone running for a dispensary for relief.
Who can blame The Bee for grasping at the dispensaries’ filthy lucre? If anything, they’re behind the curve, pot ads have become normal. The weed from the Devil’s garden is advertized on radio and television and even on huge, electronic billboards by the freeway. It was inevitable that The Bee would succumb to the lure marijuana’s lustrous green color and enticing smell. The lustrous green color and enticing smell of freshly minted money that is.
The writer, methinks, doesn't think much of pot or pot smokers.
ReplyDeleteThat's fine.
And the anti-advertising stance is fine too, except that it lacks specificity.
This column has great potential, much of which went up in smoke when the writer didn't take the extra step to research, for example, how lucrative these ads are for the Sacramento News & Review.
Also, it would be interesting to put in specifics about the Sacramento Bee - when did they start taking medicinal pot ads, how much do they cost, etc...
Add those specifics to the column, and it's a winner.