It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town

From our What a Coincidence! desk

Several weeks ago the hardworking staff over at Campaign Outsider posted an item headlined Sign o’ the Time: Everything for Sale at Newsweekly, which included this ad from the December 29 Boston Sunday Globe:

Imagine our surprise, then, when we saw this in yesterday’s Boston Sunday Globe:

Seven things you should know about Ray Ciccolo

 

Over the last half century, Village Automotive Group has grown into one of the state’s largest automobile dealers, with more than 400 employees at eight locations. President Ray Ciccolo recently chatted with Globe reporter Erin Ailworth about how it all started. Here’s what she found out:

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Ciccolo was only 24, but he already owned two coin-operated launderettes when he walked into the Gene Brown Rambler/Volvo dealership in Newton Centre looking to buy a “little, fuel efficient” Volkswagen to replace an old Buickhe had rebuilt from junkyard parts. Instead, he listened to a friend working at the dealership. Ciccolo left with a gas-guzzling Lincoln Continental — it got just three miles to the gallon — and plans to purchase the business . . .

And etc.

Not to get technical about it, but there are really eight things you should know about Ray Ciccolo.

We’re not saying there was any explicit pay-for-play arrangement here, but it’s hard to believe that a business editor wouldn’t know if an interview subject had run full-page ads in the paper, especially such self-aggrandizing ones. That might give the average editor pause, yes?

Well, in this case, no.

Coals to Newcastle, there’s also this on Page One of today’s Globe Score section.

When Globe owner John Henry gave a speech to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce the other week, he talked about new sponsored sections like Score that would deliver added valued to advertisers. That led the hardreading staff to wonder what exactly Globe sponsors would get .

We’re wondering even more now.