Advertising

One of my first editors would visibly recoil when the newspaper's ad manager occasionally ventured into the newsroom. "Here they come. Here come the ad goons," the white-haired newsman would growl, before bellowing at the offender (in more florid language than this paper allows): "Stay the heck out of our side of the building, will ya?" Man, did we love that. The old Irishman lacked subtlety.

Old scams never die, they just move to new venues. The Better Business Bureau has put out an alert that many of the dubious ads that have long popped up in e-mails and on websites are now invading online social networks, such as Facebook. Ubiquitous ads for weight-loss products, work-at-home opportunities and offers for "free" computers can cost shoppers more than they bargained for in the long run, the BBB said.

She stands 5 feet, 10 inches tall, a voluptuous bombshell in denim short shorts and a pink Hawaiian bikini top straining over with generous cleavage. Cars screech to a stop; drivers stare and point. The statuesque woman, hawking smoked ribs for $18.95 a rack, doesn't wink or wiggle or even breathe. She's just a blond mannequin, standing on the sidewalk outside of KT's Barbecue restaurant.

Cable news channel CNN's latest ad campaign is raising quite a few eyebrows and has a competitor crying foul. In a new television spot aimed at getting advertisers to spend more on the network, CNN proclaims it is "No. 1, with more viewers than Fox and MSNBC." The ad goes on to say that CNN has held the top spot for seven years in a row. This came as a news flash to Fox and MSNBC, considering that both top CNN in the ratings.

The Times and Orange County Register will together launch a weekly advertising supplement to be distributed in both papers. The supplement, OCSaver/Local Values, will be inserted into the Friday editions of the newspapers that will go to subscribers in Orange County beginning Aug. 28, said representatives of the Los Angeles Times Media Group and Orange County Register Communications on Tuesday.

The Church of Scientology has had a bad couple of years, PR-wise. You could start the damage-control clock running in January 2008 with the release of the Scientology indoctrination video featuring Tom Cruise -- you know, black turtleneck, eyes spinning -- claiming that Scientologists are the only ones who could really help at an accident scene. This summer the church was tried for fraud in France.

There are times when I want to quit being a progressive liberal, tear up my ACLU membership card and surrender my implanted mind-control chip through which I receive marching orders from Hugo Chavez. No matter the righteousness of the cause, liberal progressives cannot seem to get on top of any public policy debate, cannot seem to win any war of words -- which is just weird because you have to assume there are many more English majors among liberals.

The Los Angeles Times Media Group on Monday said three senior executives had been named to new positions that would focus on boosting advertising revenue. Scott McKibben, formerly executive vice president and chief revenue officer, will take a new post as executive vice president of strategic partnerships. In that role, he will be responsible for pursuing revenue opportunities from partnerships.

The Golden State won't let its businesses go easily, especially not to Nevada, if one California lawmaker has his say. A week after the Nevada Development Authority ran a series of advertisements urging California companies to jump ship, Assemblyman Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana) is retaliating. "I was pretty outraged by the nastiness of their tone," he said. "It's one thing to compare states in a factual way, but when you're doing nasty ads veiled in humor which dehumanize Californians, that's over the top."

Fox News host Glenn Beck used his popular show Monday to attack the background of Van Jones, a White House environmental advisor and co-founder of an African American political advocacy group that organized an advertising boycott of his program. Beck did not address the boycott spearheaded by Color of Change to protest the talk show host's remark last month that he believes President Obama is "a racist." Instead, he spent a large share of his program suggesting that Jones, who co-founded Color of Change in 2005, is a radical.