North County Leader v. New York Times: Advertising!

I have chosen to compare my local paper, the North County Leader against the prestigious New York Times in order to discover how each paper deals with advertising, particularly on their front pages.

The North County Leader is a weekly paper that concerns itself with the recent endeavours of the North County. The front page of the paper is drowning in advertisements, which I find very distracting. The advertisements featured were large and brightly coloured in order to catch the eye, while the text was pretty plain. Although these advertisements did contain very useful information, such as the number of the local taxi rank, the others were not as useful. There was only enough space for the main story on the front page, which was an article on Ultimate Fighting, the new craze for men everywhere. Due to this story’s position in the newspaper, an advertisement on the newly opened golf shop in Airside Retail Park made it onto the front page, which, in normal circumstances would be highly irregular. Subsequent pages within this publication contain similar levels of garish advertisements.

In contrary, the New York Times is sparse when it comes to advertising. Their front page doesn’t contain a single advertisement, which certainly gives way to far more stories appearing in not only the paper but on the front page. As you venture through the rest of the paper, the trend of sparse advertising continues. Regarding colour and design flare, the New York Times rather lacks both of them, using colour and advertisements when desperately needed.

In conclusion, regarding advertising, the North County Leader trumps the New York Times.