Got $142K and Want to Make a Statement? Buy an Ad in the Times

September 25, 2007 — -- A liberal group buys a full-page ad in the New York Times and sparks an uproar. Critics say the ad defames a public figure, and the paper is accused of betraying a liberal bias.

It was March 29, 1960, and the controversial ad, titled "Heed Their Rising Voices," described how Martin Luther King Jr. was mistreated by police in Alabama as part of a campaign to destroy his efforts toward ending racial segregation.

The city commissioner of Montgomery, Ala., sued the paper and the four black ministers who'd endorsed the ad, claiming that it defamed him personally. The landmark case, The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, is one of the key Supreme Court decisions supporting freedom of the press, establishing an extremely high burden of proof for a public figure who claims to have been defamed by the press.

Decades before the Times made headlines for giving MoveOn.org a discount rate to run the recent controversial ad, "General Petraeus or General Betray-Us," the paper was already one of the most visible public platforms for people who wanted to express their opinions.

From disgruntled stockholders to anti-war activists, pro-Israel to anti-Israel groups, environmentalists to defensive polluters, angry restaurateurs to conspiracy theorists, Hollywood liberals to right-wing fanatics, Donald Trump to Yoko Ono, all variety of personalities seeking a soapbox have paid tens of thousands of dollars to buy full-page ads expressing their views in the paper of record.

And in an age of declining newspaper readership (the Times' circulation slipped almost 2 percent from a year earlier) and a growing range of options for ad placement, including cell phones and video billboards, it's even more remarkable that the full-page New York Times ad remains such a coveted slot.

"It's a great platform," said Mike Hoyt, the executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. "You can talk about declining circulation, but the Times is still a big deal, the paper that the elites around the world look at."