Man Is The Media.
A Catastrophically Mistaken Newspaper Ad
March 24th, 2009 by Martin
“New Catastrophically Huge Sunday Edition.”
This poster ad is the accomplishment of a major Danish newspaper; I’ve translated the heading as best I could. It depicts a devastated forest scenery, the publication in question, and a red splash advertising a dirty cheap trial subscription.
I’m sure you can imagine the marketing execs brainstorming for ideas, wanting to be provocative, thought provoking, not necessarily politically correct etc.
I’m sure this poster does all that. It also reminds us of all the dead trees that went into the print production of this huge Sunday edition. In these days where the digital edition more and more starts looking like a valid alternative and the environmental focus never has been stronger; the message I take away is not the huge Sunday edition. It’s the dead trees. And that’s bad, not least since Denmark is hosting the COP15 climate conference this year.
In the first edition of this new Sunday edition, the Editor In Chief opened his editorial introduction talking about how the newspaper was printed on recycled paper. Another article elaborated on that. It was as if the editorial team felt they had to apologize somehow.
Nonetheless, I still felt sorry for the dead trees, recycled or not. And to me the poster reads almost like an epitaph for the entire printed industry.
