After the Los Angeles Times last week agreed to replace its controversial print and TV ad that featured a group of bikini-clad women posed opposite Muslim women draped head to toe in traditional chadors, staffers and outside observers were bemoaning yet another embarrassing mistake by the city’s biggest daily.
Some blamed outgoing Publisher Kathryn Downing for the campaign, which they are calling her “last big screw-up.”
“This really further shows what happens when people who don’t understand newspapers are put in charge of them,” said Bryce Nelson, a journalism professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and a former Times reporter.
TV commercials with the controversial images were expected to end last weekend while outdoor ads were to be replaced as soon as the newspaper could physically remove them from billboards and the sides of buses, probably by the end of the month.
“(The ads) will be replaced by new material in the campaign,” said Jim Helin, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for the Times. “The reason we are doing this is that we wish to respond to the opinions of others who have expressed their concerns. In this case, it makes no sense not to replace them with other ads. It was time to move on.”
The ads are part of a $15 million campaign aimed at wooing new subscribers to the newspaper by showing the scope of the publication’s coverage using the slogan, “connecting us to The Times.”
The campaign, created by Marina del Rey-based Ground Zero Advertising, juxtaposes photos of people living in Southern California with international scenes, some of them violent ones. But some people, including several members of the paper’s staff and groups representing women and Muslims, found the images highly offensive. Some 200 members of the Times’ editorial staff signed a petition calling for the withdrawal of the ad.
The Times’ decision came at a time when the newspaper’s ownership is being turned over to the Tribune Co. A Tribune spokeswoman said her company had no plans to step into the controversy, which would be left “in the hands of the Times’ management.”
The Times has reported that Downing will be replaced by Orlando Sentinel Publisher John Puerner once the Tribune takes over, while Editor Michael Parks will be replaced by Baltimore Sun Editor John Carroll.
