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In the Express today
The Express, the free daily tabloid newspaper handed out at Metro stations and from boxes on street corners in Washington and published by the Washington Post, has a really, really awful juxtaposition of ads today.
On page 8, left side of the spread, a house (internal) ad with the headline “As disaster unfolds, your help is needed urgently,” contact information for charities, and pictures of four recent Post front pages, with headlines “Storm Thrashes Gulf Coast,”“Floods Ravage New Orleans,”“In New Orleans, a Desperate Exodus,” and “A City of Despair and Lawlessness.”
On page 9, right side of the spread, an ad for the National AIDS Marathon Training Program. These are everywhere in DC, and always have the tagline “In 6 months, we can train YOU to complete the [city name here] Marathon.” In today’s ad, the marathon they’re offering to train me for is the New Orleans Mardi Gras Marathon. If I sign up for the training program, I get roundtrip air travel and hotel accommodations in the French Quarter of New Orleans for the marathon on February 5, 2006.
This is ridiculous. While it’s admirable to assume that the New Orleans Mardi Gras Marathon, or Mardi Gras itself, will happen in February of 2006, the placement of this ad, with its smiling runners and photo of a happy, plant-bedecked French Quarter balcony, opposite the headlines from this week, with their photos of people mobbing helicopters, people rescuing each other off rooftops in flat-bottom boats, people walking amidst the wreckage of their homes, and highway overpasses just barely above water, makes me want to cry even more. The marathon ad shouldn’t have run, and it certainly shouldn’t have run where it did.
Here’s the PDF of the whole paper if anyone cares to see it. It has security settings (as it should) that don’t let me cut it down to the relevant two pages. That’s a 10mb file, but I’ll put the ad pages up as images from home tonight.
www.kostia.net/pics/EXPRESS_09062005.pdf
Edited to add:
Here are the pages in question, side by side. You can click on them to blow them up a bit. I just can’t believe no one caught this and moved them apart. If the clinic paid for placement, fine, leave them on 9, but move the house ad.