Quite often these are advertising sections and these so-called auto review writers work for the advertising department, not the editorial department. It's the same thing with real estate sections. In these cases you're really reading ads.

That's right-on, too. There has been an increasing trend over the last several years in which advertising copy is generated to look like the regular text of the newspaper itself. In addition, a lot of mid- to large-sized papers have their own auto writers -- these were the guys I was talking about. Simply ridiculous some of the stuff that used to (and still does) go on with that. But the "article advertisement" is another worrisome thing because very often it is layed out identically to the paper's usual format, in the same fonts, and with only a small, ten-point "Advertisement" printed at the top.

The jouranlists I know in my industry are the biggest spongers ever for free flights etc and are very dangerous when they dont get what they want - and boy dont they know it.

It disturbs me to no end, but the sad truth is that media ethics continue to erode at a phenomenal rate. High-profile reporters in top media markets reporting information they know to be false? Yep. Reporters writing a story first and then finding the sources to validate it? Yep. Ad departments selling spots on the news with their ads/marketing agreements? Yep. The list goes on and on. It's not long ago that having reporters interview other reporters as "experts" on a topic would have been unheard of. Ah the days of journalists acting as humble observers. Now, turn on any cable channel and you can watch reporters interviewing reporters as experts on science, politics, you name it.

Given all of the other things I've seen, a status comp is the least of my worries about media. And frankly, if the reporter is comparing elite programs and services, a limited-time status offer wouldn't be out of line IMO. You can't expect he or the paper to waste the time and money it would take to earn status across several carriers just to write the story. Oh how I miss Brill's Content....

Don't you remember what happened when the SJ Mercury News did a detrimental story on car dealers and used car dealers a while ago? The car dealers all pulled their ads, and there was never another story about them since.

-David

i was on a shooting trip once, when newspaper outdoors column writer, who had been comped for 2 days for 2 people, showed up w 7 others....my friends, who ran the thing, bit the bullet so to speak!...he did write a nice column, & i got my picture in the paper...i paid, however.

There's a wonderful scene early in the film Citizen Kane , supposedly based on a true incident involving publisher William Randolph Hearst (the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane). A group of business leaders, angry at an article in Kane's newspaper, threaten an advertising boycott that would cost the paper "a million dollars a year."

Yes it would, smiles Orson Welles as Kane, "and if I lose money at that rate my paper will go bankrupt and stop publishing -- in 81 years."

There are non-fictional examples of print or broadcast media ignoring such threats to the bottom line but they're far too rare.