Advertising and the normalization of the abnormal
Look at the picture that illustrates this entry. Take a good look, please. In fact, click the next link to see it in its full glory and with no red layer: it is the home page of El País, long considered Spain’s newspaper of record, from a couple of days ago. But it is so crammed with advertising that reading the news is practically impossible: an advertising campaign occupies both margins of the page, a banner dominates the bottom, another additional module has been placed on the right but without reaching the margin… A quick pixel count reveals that non-advertising content, the news that is supposed to be the newspaper’s raison d’être, occupies only 40% of the page’s surface, while advertising for different brands occupies the remaining 60%. If we discount the space occupied by the bar with the masthead at the top, content takes up even less.
A 60/40 ratio. How is it that one of the country’s leading newspapers can fill 60% of its front page with content its readers have not requested and, moreover, do not want to see? We visit El País’s website to find out what’s going on in the world by reading articles written by journalists who bring their prestige and influence to the medium, and instead we find that the paper’s management has dedicated 60% of the available screen space with garbage that makes it all but impossible to read those articles. One might be…
