Fairfield newspaper says covering Biden, Harris with ad unintentional
The editor of Fairfield's Daily Republic said a last-minute design decision coupled with a "sticky" ad led to the candidates' faces being covered on Sunday.
(Image via Joe Biden on Twitter.com)
A last-minute design decision coupled with a lack of communication between the editorial and advertisement departments led to an unfortunate placement of an advertisement that obscured the faces of the presumed winners of the presidential election in Sunday’s edition of the Fairfield-Suisun Daily Republic.
The admission came from Glen Faison, the newspaper’s top editor, in a note to readers published on Wednesday, nearly three full days after paper was sent to readers.
In the note, Faison said the newspaper worked to include information about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s presumptive election victory after major news organizations called the race for him and his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris.
“Whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, third-party believer or an independent, the selection of a president of these United States is a big deal and worthy of special treatment by news organizations both large and small,” Faison said.
To accommodate their historic win, Faison said the Daily Republic worked throughout the day to create a front page for the Sunday edition that minimized the newspaper’s own branding in exchange for a blown-out graphic of the electroal vote as projected by other news organizations. The front page was also redesigned to include an oversized photo of Biden and Harris captured during their acceptance speeches in Delaware on Saturday.
“Mission accomplished,” Faison said. “Or so we thought.”
The newspaper’s effort to create a slick front page to commemorate the momentus occasion was ruined by the placement of a so-called “sticky” ad, which was affixed directly over the faces of the two candidates.
Faison said this was unintentional and the result of “how paid advertising and the efforts of the newsroom sometimes collide unexpectedly.”
“We typically do not know in the newsroom when those sticky notes ads will be included on a given day’s front page,” Faison wrote in his column. “Its placement Sunday was — to put it mildly — unfortunate.”
It wasn’t clear if the Daily Republic had received complaints from its readers over the placement of the advertisement. But that type of ad isn’t likely to go away anytime soon; instead, Faison said the newspaper’s designers will stick to normal templates and avoid liberties with the overall look and feel of the front page in the future.
“That way whenever there’s a sticky notes ads, it is not likely to cause this type of situation to occur,” Faison wrote.
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