swill bucket

"advertising is the sound of a stick in a swill bucket."-george orwell_____________________i have always admired orwell's take on many things...this being one of them...advertizing is rank manipulation and i know it when i see it...today's new york times is a disappointing two pounds nine and three-quarters ounces in weight...one presumes this will pick up a bit as the "false and commercial festival" gathers inertia...we will be delving into that...forewarned is forearmed...i was curious to see what the cost of all this manipulation was so i went to the n y times advertizing web site and did ab it of research...i looked at full page ads only...mostly because i didn't want to sped the time screwing around counting half and quarter page ads...so the totals for advertizing revenues herein are woefully incomplete...forewarned is forearmed...full page ads in the newspaper itself range in price by section and color/black and white...$214,723 buys you a four color full-page ad in the front section or the business section $178,633 for a black and white..the fine arts section brings up the tail end $107,970 for color and $71,870 for black and white...perhaps out of deference for starving artists...so the three full page beauties pictured fetched the nyt $644,199...but it is the magazines that drive the business and no mistake...full page color in either of the magazines ( the standard weekly or the periodical style ) runs $107,075 and black and white $73,420...today's magazines contain seventy-four full page color ads and six black and white for a total full page income of $8,364,243...and combined with the three full page ads pictured we're up to $9,008,442...add in half page, quarter page column, half column and subscriptions and you can see that there is cash flow here and, despite the whining from the print media about digital, profit as well i'm thinking...clearly news is a secondary part of this and i don't doubt that it is slanted to placate the advertiser's world views...the truth is a flexible thing...we all find different versions..but this alone is valid reason to trust no media. 7:52 p.m. 11-2-2014 just a note to say that my original figures were off...blame age...they have been adjusted downward...that's still no excuse for gross manipulation or gross amounts of cash...it's just an adjustment.