A couple of hours after posting yesterday's entry, I was told by our advertising director that he had spoken to the PR guy responsible for the ad campaign of the politician I cited. The PR guy said the candidate was angry about something Political Editor Hugh Reynolds had written, thus the Freeman's exclusion from his ad schedule.

Say what?

Reynolds no doubt has angered scores of politicians of all stripes in his nearly 40 years of writing City Beat columns. (I've heard from many of them personally.) But he's paid to offer his opinions, so he's bound to step on some toes. (And when he's made aware of factual errors, he quickly corrects them.)

The bigger question is, who suffers when someone makes advertising placement decisions such as this one?

The newspaper, of course, doesn't get much-desired advertising revenue. But the advertiser/politician doesn't succeed in getting his/her message out to the widest audience, those independently audited (Audit Bureau of Circulations) tens of thousands I mentioned yesterday.

I'll never forget what a former ad director told me years ago: People shouldn't advertise with us because we're nice guys or not advertise with us because they don't like us. They should advertise where they'll get the best results.