Metaphorically speaking, that is.
The hardreading staff’s memory isn’t what it used to be, but we can’t recall the Boston Globe ever selling the top of Page One to an advertiser.
Until yesterday.
Oddly enough, there’s no Boston Medical Center ad inside yesterday’s edition, the way you’d normally expect. Then again, the front-page banner might be just a teaser. (We’re writing this around midnight on Tuesday, so we’ll update in the AM.)
Coincidentally, yesterday the Wall Street Journal sold the same Page One real estate to another medical facility, NewYork-Presbyterian.
Again, we admit that we’re fast approaching our dotage, but we also don’t remember the Journal ever turning its top floor into a sort of Adbnb.
The monetization of newspaper front pages has evolved from Shabbat notices on Page One of the New York Times to full-fledged takeovers of front pages to whatever this new phase is.
Not for nothing, but NewYork-Presbyterian could only rent the basement at today’s Times.
A whole new version of Upstairs/Downstairs, eh?
P.S. No Boston Medical Center ad in today’s Globe. Huh.
It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 
[…] the hardreading staff duly noted, on Tuesday the Boston Globe pimped out – for the first time – its front page to the […]