As the hardreading staff recently noted, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Ad Council have teamed up to run an ad campaign with the theme Save the Food, urging people to reduce food waste.
The partnership has run newspaper ads such as this one . . .
. . . and this one . . .
. . . both of which ran in the Boston Globe last week.
But not the Boston Herald.
So we sent this email to the Ad Council:
Dear Sir or Madam,
[We] noted with interest the ads you’ve run the past two days in the Boston Globe. But not the Boston Herald.
[We] know the ads you produce virtually always run pro bono, so just wondering: Did you not ask the Herald to run them, or did you ask and the paper decline?
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
[The hardreading staff]
No reply.
Then, suddenly, this half-page ad ran in yesterday’s hungry local tabloid.
So: Either the Ad Council finally asked, or the Herald finally agreed to run the ad pro bono.
Coincidence?
We defer to Leroy Jethro Gibbs’s Rule 39 (at 1:52) to answer that.
It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 