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The Time A Newspaper Stared Down The Country's Largest Advertiser
Hat tip, Hemmings: Four-Links – Cadillac come down, oldest Airstream, tiny electric fast, Cartier concours
Daniel Strohl May 2nd, 2015 at 8am
....
* Finally, an interesting ProPublica story about the time the Wall Street Journal refused to capitulate to General Motors over an issue called bootlegging. If not thrilling for the journalistic stare-down, it’s at least informative for the dealership practices going on in the mid-1950s.
....
* Finally, an interesting ProPublica story about the time the Wall Street Journal refused to capitulate to General Motors over an issue called bootlegging. If not thrilling for the journalistic stare-down, it’s at least informative for the dealership practices going on in the mid-1950s.
The Time A Newspaper Stared Down The Country's Largest Advertiser
A little-remembered incident helped establish the notion that news organizations could and should preserve their independence from advertisers.
by Richard Tofel
ProPublica, April 22, 2015, 1:33 p.m.
Editor's Note: The news last week that Buzzfeed had deleted posts critical of advertisers got some of us at ProPublica wondering about any instances when news organizations stood up to advertiser pressure. As it turns out, ProPublica president Richard Tofel wrote a whole chapter of a book about one of those cases: In 1954, the Wall Street Journal and its publisher, Barney Kilgore, confronted General Motors. The little-remembered incident helped establish the notion that news organizations could and should preserve their independence from advertisers. ... Here is an adaptation from the book, "Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism."
....
On May 3, 1954 Harlow Curtice can hardly have been pleased by what he found in one of the newspapers they fetched. A Wall Street Journal article laid bare a tactic the auto manufacturers had recently been deploying to great effect. The tactic revolved around the practice of "bootlegging" cars — sales by smaller, independent dealers of excess new car inventories at cut-rate prices.
....
On May 28, the Journal published another exclusive story, revealing details, including renderings of the styling of the 1955 new car models due in the Fall. Read today, John Williams's story seems innocuous, even perhaps excessively promotional. It began: "Forecast for 1955 auto models: More makes will be thoroughly restyled than ever before in the half-century of automotive history." ... From an industry perspective there was a big problem. But the problem wasn't the renderings — it was the story's timing. As the story itself noted, "the alterations are certainly intended to be sufficient so that 1954 models will strike their owners as old-fashioned, once the '55's are in the showrooms; they will stir the itch for a brand-new car." In the Fall that would be good for business: the '54's would be nearly all sold. But just ahead of June, traditionally the industry's biggest sales month, the revelations were thought by the automakers to cause a possible disaster: sales of the about-to-be-"old-fashioned" '54's could dry up prematurely, as buyers awaited the exciting '55's. The president of Chrysler told the reporter he "had put a dagger into the hearts of the dealers."
....
GM's pent-up fury at the bootlegging story and the premature release of the 1955 new car designs quickly exploded. Curtice himself had years earlier personally made the decision to begin advertising in the Journal. Now, however, on the very day the new-designs story was published, GM, acting through five different advertising agencies, cancelled all advertising in the Journal. The immediate cancellations came to just over $11,000, or about $96,000 today, but the New York Times estimated that GM had been running in the Journal at a rate of at least $250,000 annually (or nearly $2.2 million in 2015 dollars).
by Richard Tofel
ProPublica, April 22, 2015, 1:33 p.m.
Editor's Note: The news last week that Buzzfeed had deleted posts critical of advertisers got some of us at ProPublica wondering about any instances when news organizations stood up to advertiser pressure. As it turns out, ProPublica president Richard Tofel wrote a whole chapter of a book about one of those cases: In 1954, the Wall Street Journal and its publisher, Barney Kilgore, confronted General Motors. The little-remembered incident helped establish the notion that news organizations could and should preserve their independence from advertisers. ... Here is an adaptation from the book, "Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism."
....
On May 3, 1954 Harlow Curtice can hardly have been pleased by what he found in one of the newspapers they fetched. A Wall Street Journal article laid bare a tactic the auto manufacturers had recently been deploying to great effect. The tactic revolved around the practice of "bootlegging" cars — sales by smaller, independent dealers of excess new car inventories at cut-rate prices.
....
On May 28, the Journal published another exclusive story, revealing details, including renderings of the styling of the 1955 new car models due in the Fall. Read today, John Williams's story seems innocuous, even perhaps excessively promotional. It began: "Forecast for 1955 auto models: More makes will be thoroughly restyled than ever before in the half-century of automotive history." ... From an industry perspective there was a big problem. But the problem wasn't the renderings — it was the story's timing. As the story itself noted, "the alterations are certainly intended to be sufficient so that 1954 models will strike their owners as old-fashioned, once the '55's are in the showrooms; they will stir the itch for a brand-new car." In the Fall that would be good for business: the '54's would be nearly all sold. But just ahead of June, traditionally the industry's biggest sales month, the revelations were thought by the automakers to cause a possible disaster: sales of the about-to-be-"old-fashioned" '54's could dry up prematurely, as buyers awaited the exciting '55's. The president of Chrysler told the reporter he "had put a dagger into the hearts of the dealers."
....
GM's pent-up fury at the bootlegging story and the premature release of the 1955 new car designs quickly exploded. Curtice himself had years earlier personally made the decision to begin advertising in the Journal. Now, however, on the very day the new-designs story was published, GM, acting through five different advertising agencies, cancelled all advertising in the Journal. The immediate cancellations came to just over $11,000, or about $96,000 today, but the New York Times estimated that GM had been running in the Journal at a rate of at least $250,000 annually (or nearly $2.2 million in 2015 dollars).