Catherine J. Mathis, a spokeswoman for The New York Times Company, said the advertising department does not base its rates on political content. She also said the department does not disclose the rates it charges for individual advertisements. But she did say that “similar types of ads are priced in the same way.” She said the department charges advocacy groups $64,575 for full-page, black-and-white advertisements that run on a “standby” basis, meaning an advertiser can request a specific day and placement but is not guaranteed them…. Ms. Mathis said the content of an advertisement is not reviewed before a price is quoted. As for advance word of when a standby ad is running, she said: “Someone might say, ‘I’d like the standby rate, I’d like it to run tomorrow,’ and we say, ‘We can’t guarantee that,’ but then if we find out it is running, we let them know. If we have room, we try to accommodate them.”
The next time we heard from Ms. Mathis was on Sunday when the Times‘s public editor, Clark Hoyt, reported that MoveOn “got a price break it was not entitled to.” Here’s the explanation from Mathis:
Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, said, ”We made a mistake.” She said the advertising representative failed to make it clear that for that rate The Times could not guarantee the Monday placement but left MoveOn.org with the understanding that the ad would run then. She added, ”That was contrary to our policies.”
Today the paper does a follow-up:
In a follow-up interview yesterday, Ms. Mathis declined to comment on how the original mistake occurred or how it came to light. Asked if the sales representative was sympathetic to MoveOn or was unaware of the pricing policy, Ms. Mathis said: “The salesperson did not see the content of the ad at the time the rate was quoted. There was no bias.”
That statement is absurd on its face, as Tom Maguire sarcastically exclaims: “Because the sales rep had no idea at all which side of the issue MoveOn was taking!” Right. But what I’d like to know is whether Mathis lied to one of the paper’s own reporters when first questioned about the discount. The conflict of interest here is obvious, as is the fact that the paper is no longer capable of fairly reporting this story–if it ever was.
