Monday, June 8, 2009

The Bottom of the Page

Congratulations to PacRep. my personal favorite local theater company, for its stellar marketing campaign to promote its production of "The Blue Room." It certainly got what it needed from The Herald.

A couple of days before the May 28 opening of the show, we were told of a "late ad" that would be running on the front page of The Herald. Whatever. The folks in the newsroom don't actually see the advertisements before they get in the paper. But about 10:30 that night, our copy desk got a call from someone upstairs, in the production department, asking if anyone was aware that a woman's naked butt was scheduled to appear on the front page.

The production guy sent down a copy of the ad, our assistant city editor appropriately flipped, and she called her bosses at home to figure out what do do with the woman's posterior. Since none of us had actually seen the bare-assed ad, the assistant city editor was told to use her discretion. So she pulled the thing.

She was hailed as a Herald Hero for doing so -- and PacRep had its Eureka! moment for its follow-up ads. The Blue Room! A Production Too Hot for The Herald to Handle! The local weeklies had a great time of it, accusing The Herald of being censorial prudes, pointing out that the depiction of undressed buttocks was the work of a noted photographer, etc.

It seems like a silly thing to defend, the removal of exposed tush from the front page. But I think the assistant city editor made the correct call. She, for one, is not offended by exposed cheek action, but figured the majority of readers probably aren't prepared to confront a naked butt when they open their daily newspaper. Here on the Monterey Peninsula, people get so riled up that they call me to complain because they think Adam@Work is too racy, that the general's secretary in Beetle Bailey is profoundly sexist.

And what if, next time, the depiction of bare ass is not the artistic and shapely bottom of a model? What if PacRep chose instead to present an Andres Serrano photograph of the hairy, flabby keister of a middle-age man to promote its next show?

If I was promoting PacRep, I'd give it a try. It certainly got a lot of marketing mileage out of The Blue Room's tush.

18 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. AMP TV, a wonderful spot to share crucial community information. Could there be a more appropriately ironic venue to expose a scoundrel, a weasel politician who would viciously drag sad family issues into a debate from the sewerage of his anonymity?

    Wednesday at 5 p.m. Must-see TV.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. For the record, this is the comment RoyalPain removed above:

    "But Herald readers have to look at an A$$ everytime we see your photo Joe."

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  6. Regarding those folks who say mean things about me on the radio . . . Let 'em. They have the right. They are free to say anything they care to say about me and The Herald. At least they aren't weasel politicians who sludge around in gutless anonymity to drag family into their pathetic bitterness.

    This has never been about anybody's right to criticize me. Go for it. Take your best shot. It comes with the territory. What this is about is a sleaze politician with the character of a guttersnipe.

    My name is Joe Livernois and I stand by these words; and RoyalPain is still a spineless twerp.

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  7. No, I won't post RoyalPain's latest comment, which is a desperate reposting of my family's court record. It was this original post that first launched this nastiness and exposed his cowardice.

    I will reiterate my generous offer. If he's willing to emerge from his anonymous sewage, I will happily turn over the entirety of the court records he seems to be so obsessed about, and I will submit to an interview about it all, with the unexpurgated transcript posted right here on this blog.

    People who are truly interested in seeing the Livernois court record could navigate to https://www.justicepartners.monterey.courts.ca.gov/Public/JPPublicIndex.aspx . You'll find a kid with felonies, my speeding citations and some stuff about a Livernois I've never met.

    Again, I talk about this stuff openly, but not with anonymous weasels who stupidly think they are using it against me.

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  8. MORE OF THE RANTS THAT ROYALPAIN SELF-DELETED FROM ABOVE:

    AMP supports several channels...

    If you're referring to "Your Town", some of the Heralds lies have been exposed there by various speakers over the past few years... apparently you weren't tuned in.

    May as well throw in AM Radio 1460 AM and KNRY 1240 on their morning programs... more than a few folks have had some things to say about Livernois et al on these shows...


    AND THERE WAS THIS, POSTED AFTER THE AIRING OF YOUR TOWN ON AMP:

    ...if a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one there to hear it...

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  9. I have a question for you about the death of Mike Nichols.

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  10. Ask away.

    If you're talking about Mike Echols, I didn't kill him.

    If you're talking about MIke Nichols, I didn't kill him either, but I thought The Graduate was a fine movie.

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  11. Ask away.

    If you're talking about Mike Echols, I didn't kill him.

    If you're talking about MIke Nichols, I didn't kill him either, but I thought The Graduate was a fine movie.

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  12. I meant Mike Echols. Good catch. OK. So, here is a very short website about the death of Mike Echols... it is several years old:
    http://www.newsmakingnews.com/vm,echols1,13,03.htm

    I am wondering what you think about the veracity of the website. I remember you reported on this story for the Herald.

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  13. Actually Mike Nichols is still living, happily married to Diane Sawyer.

    Michael Echols was an actor in NYPD Blue which as far as I know has nothing to do with Mike Nichols. I'm not sure if Mike Echols is still alive or not though. According to IMDB he hasn't appeared in a movie or tv show since 2005.

    I'm dying to know what this has anything to do with the original blog posting though.

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  14. Welcome Kevin W.

    First, you should know that Joe Livernois' does not like you posting anonymously. [watch out, he likes to refer to anybody posting anonymously as a "gutless creep" and other pejorative terms... though he seems to allude he knows the identities of the posters].

    Second, the take a look at the link http://www.newsmakingnews.com/vm,echols1,13,03.htm
    to see the Mike Echols that I was referring to. Joe knows well the story because he reported on it for the harold.

    Finally, this blog is called "Ask the Editor", however, no provision is made to "Ask the Editor" because nobody except the editor can post to the main forum, and only the editor can decide whether to allow a post to appear here.

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  15. attorneybuster: You're asking me?

    Kevin W.: Echols/Nichols has nothing to do with anything. This forum is like falling into the rabbit-hole.

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  16. Also, Kevin, you're free to rip me a new one in this forum. But don't you dare cross attorneybuster or RoyalPain or they'll try to drag your kids and family through the grinder, they'll do it with witless zeal and they'll do it from the cowardice of their anonymity.

    I'm fair game. My family is not.

    So, yeah, they're pussbags.

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  17. By the way, I just managed to get to and from Lemongrass without a getting speeding ticket. Wanted to inform the pussbag politician, since he's so obsessed with my crime record.

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  18. Hey, weasel politician, you've been asleep at the switch. Someone named Livernois is back in jail and you haven't tried to blast it on my blog.

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