Was the IKEA Coverage News or Advertising?

The purpose of news is to inform.

The purpose of advertising, on the other hand, is persuasion

News takes no sides, but the citizen’s. News is skeptical. It anticipates the self-interest of sources and balances them with those on the other side of an issue. News seeks neutral experts to help readers and viewers make sense of competing points of view. Its standard of truth is the best available evidence. The measure of success is citizen empowerment.

Advertising selectively provides information. “You’ve got to ac-centuate the positive. E-lim-inate the negative. Latch on to the affirmative,” as Johnny Mercer put it in a popular song. The standard of truth is whatever the majority can be brought to believe. The measure of success is sales.

When IKEA came to Chicago, it ran facing full-page color ads every day for weeks, an ad executive at the Chicago Tribune said. Such an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner would run $61,600 for a single weekday, a bit more on Sunday, according the paper’s ad department.

What IKEA will spend on Bay Area media is uncertain. After the splashy beginning, a second Chicago Tribune ad manager said, IKEA settled in to become a significant source of ad revenues, but not among the paper's largest.

News? Or promotion?

On March 10, a full month before the Swedish furniture store is to open in the East Bay, the Chronicle ran not one, but two stories. The front page headline read: “The Mother of All Furniture Stores.” The business section front gushed: “Shopping will never be the same after giant Swedish home goods retailer opens in Emeryville.”

Even though it’s almost 50 miles of gridlock to the south, on the very same day the San Jose Mercury News covered most of its lifestyle front with IKEA. “Countdown to IKEA” read a headline bolder than any other in the paper. “IKEA will furnish Bay Area, finally,” a second headline read, carrying through the motif of longing.

IKEA has announced that it hopes to open a South Bay store in the near future.

Objective coverage?

Since news is supposed to be about wising up the public, rather than selling furniture, you might expect a news story to compare prices in the new store with the best prices already available for furniture. How about merchandise quality? selection? service? return policy? parking availability? convenience? How many will be employed and at what wages?

Presumably a news story would answer these questions. The sources would be, as much as possible, independent of IKEA. Not people hired to promote the store. Finally, reporters would refrain from offering un-sourced comments unless they were supported by evidence.

Instead, the Mercury reporter trailed a crew producing IKEA television ads--“three buff New York actors clad in spotless jumpsuits and reminiscent of Manny, Moe and Jack of Pep Boys fame.” “The IKEA phenomenon,” she wrote without quoting any source, “has made believers out of shoppers from Barcelona, Spain to Baltimore, Md.”

Without mentioning a source she wrote: “Buyers are used to getting merchandise such as sturdy tableware for mere dollars per unit.” And “the secret behind keeping prices so low is the IKEA notion of customer involvement.” Finally, “And come April 12, the Bay Area will at last discover what IKEA fans have been raving about all these years.”

Astonishingly for a paper of the Merc’s fine reputation, the story quoted only two sources--an IKEA exec in town for the promotion and his TV ad director.

To its credit, the Chronicle articles quoted one independent expert and several persons who were not part of the IKEA promotional team. They also mentioned--at the very end--that the chain had to close one store in Southern California and that the owner was “involved in the Nazi Party in his youth.” But otherwise the tone verged on hyperbole. Two examples from just the first six inches of the front page story:

·        “But shoppers in the know--many of whom have encountered IKEA elsewhere in the United States, Europe or Asia--have already made out shopping lists and circled the store’s opening date, April 12, on their calendars.” (No source, but later mentioned three shoppers who apparently represent all Bay Area "shoppers in the know.")

·        “The grand opening promises to be the closest a Scandinavian entity--other than Abba--can get to causing a frenzy.” (No source, but next sentence quotes IKEA General Manager Michael O’Rourke.)

The IKEA store is indeed huge. It has proved popular elsewhere. But will shopping in the Bay Area "never be the same" after April 12? Is one store's opening in a metro area of 6 million a "phenomenon?" Will we really join the "believers" extending the flock from Barcelona past Baltimore to Berkeley?

Not every paper lost its composure, however. The Contra Costa Times had the temerity to report that IKEA had been criticized on privacy grounds for running a “viral marketing” plan in which shoppers could earn discounts for sending friends IKEA internet postcards promoting the store.

Times reporter Janet Adamy said IKEA is newsworthy (and later wrote a story about the store), but “I personally don’t think you have to preview the opening of a store a month and a half ahead of time.” Non-profit public radio has also abstained. Andrea Kissack, senior producer of the California Report, aired on KQED radio, said they aren’t planning any IKEA stories.

(The Chronicle responded after press time, but you can click here to see it now.) Steve Wright, the lifestyle page editor at the Merc, defended his story: “It is a very popular store so it deserves coverage. Lots of people, including myself, had not heard of this store before. And those who knew of the store agreed it is a big deal for people looking for home furnishings. I was convinced that it would be useful to tell readers it was opening here soon.” Merc reporter Crystal Chow echoed Wright’s argument. Chow also said the advertising department did not suggest the story; her editors did.

With all due respect, stores able to wallpaper the community with ads may not need help alerting consumers of their arrival.

Even full page ads and "buff IKEA Guys" on TV, however, can’t buy credibility. Smart advertisers try to establish believability with “news” stories before the ad blitz. People tend to discount claims made in recognizable advertisements. But news stories are supposed to be objective, worthy of trust.

You can’t blame IKEA for trying to grease the skids for its ads. But it is troubling when the area’s biggest and best newspapers supply the lube.

So What?

Is any harm done when a news organization mixes promotion with news?

Maybe not. But Americans are trusting--and using--news less. The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and the the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) recently phoned thousands of citizens and journalists. What they found disturbed them:

• 79 percent of the American public believe that “it’s pretty easy for special interest groups to manipulate the press,” according to ASNE. (This may surprise you: 55 percent of newspaper journalists agree!)

• 84 percent of Americans say “news reporting on local TV is improperly influenced by advertisers often (51 percent) or sometimes (33 percent),” according to the RTNDA. (You might be surprised to know that 43 percent of TV news directors agree!)

Boosting the interests of big advertisers breeds cynicism. If Americans lump bad journalism with the good and turn away, it won’t just damage the corporations that bring us news. It will hurt us all. For better or worse, self-government requires both reliable public information and public trust in it.

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