Ala. daily draws fire for 'Most Wanted' display page

An Alabama newspaper is feeling the heat after experimenting with a special front page this week. The Anniston Star, fighting decreased readership despite its reputation as one of the nation's best community dailies, took a hint from a local publication and decided to wrap rack copies of Monday’s edition in a “Most Wanted” display crafted by the paper’s marketing department – a decision causing some tension in the town and in the trade, Liz Cox Barrett reports for the Columbia Journalism Review.

Critics claim the locally owned Star stole the mugshot layout idea from Bama Busted, a local gossip publication. But Robert Jackson, who supervised the design, argues that it did not replicate the gossip appeal of Bama Busted. The general consensus, though, is that the Star was out of line, Cox Barrett says. “If there’s money to be made from mug shots, can we fault a newspaper for aiming for some of that market?” she writes. “But, did the Star have to give over it its entire front page (and then some)? And, not even to the highest-bidding advertiser but to marketing-department-generated content made to look like ‘news?’ ” As journalism changes, a timely question is whether conduct unexpected is equal to conduct unbecoming. (Read more)