I am so sick of “news” stories about GoDaddy and their “travails” in getting a Super Bowl ad approved. Does anyone really consider this news? Actually, here’s a better question: Was this ever news? This is an annual tradition since 2005. I hardly think it was newsworthy then, but at this point it’s an annual publicity stunt and nothing more.
A journalist’s job is not just to report what’s going on, it’s to make decisions about what’s important and worthy of the public’s attention. One of the first things you learn as a student of journalism is how to interpret press releases—even at our university paper, we received well over 20 press releases a day. Most were so banal they were never even read in full. Others were interesting but not news. Maybe one a day included some piece of information that with proper follow up (also known as reporting) was a legitimate news story.
Even the first time it happened – four Super Bowls ago – the GoDaddy thing was a total publicity stunt. That’s what making a “shocking,” “boundry-pushing” ad is all about. Whether it was their intention to make something just offensive enough to be censored I don’t know, but either way they were going to come out a winner. Either the ad would make it to air and (presumably) offend enough people to create a “controversy” that put the company’s name in news stories … or the ad would get rejected and you’d have the same “controversy.”
GoDaddy complaining about the rejection of their Super Bowl ad was clever in 2005, but at least then it was new, which if you can read you understand to be an important part of news (roughly seventy-five percent, give or take). Now it’s just tired. And yet they’ve had front page stories on azcentral.com over several weeks. It’s poor journalism and poor editing.
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Speaking of poor editorials decisions made by azcentral, when I opened it up this morning the story about Kate Walsh making an appearance at yesterday’s Barack Obama rally had a headline of, “Star power trotted out to back Obama at ASU.” Yes, really. Journalism professors all over the state no doubt laughed, took some aspirin for their headache, and then printed it out for future lectures on what not to do.
By this afternoon, the headline had been changed. Weak. At least before you were wearing your bias proudly, Republic editors.
[UPDATE] The old headline is still in the archive.
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