The cost of advertising w/update

Reading about MoveOn.org's huge discount on their New York Times ad makes me wonder if Shellenberger had access to that kind of discount...

According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692."

A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate.

A Post reporter who called the Times advertising department yesterday without identifying himself was quoted a price of $167,000 for a full-page black-and-white ad on a Monday.

Serphos declined to confirm the price and refused to offer any inkling for why the paper would give MoveOn.org such a discounted price.

I've always wondered where the money was going to come from to pay for Salzman, Stoen and Gallegos' proposed full page ads in the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle.

When I talked to the ad rep for the LA Times, he sure wasn't offering any more than an ordinary frequency discount, and surprisingly, he hadn't heard of Michael Shellenberger or Lumina Strategies.

If you remember - The plan was for Paul Gallegos, the District Attorney (the chief law enforcement officer of Humboldt County) to solicit special interest money to fund the Palco lawsuit by placing "full page ads in the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle."

At the time the cost of a full page ad in the Los Angeles Times, at open rate was $103,200.00. ($800.00 per inch) $129,000.00 if the ad ran on Sunday ($1,000.00 per inch) and the cost of a full page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle, at open rate was $73,788.00. ($572.00 per inch) $77,529.00 if the ad ran on Sunday ($601.00 per inch), the cost of an ad in the local paper, The Times Standard was $30.50 per inch, or $3,934.50.

So who was going to be placing the ads, I wonder? Fenton Communications? Or some newly created group? And how much were they actually going to pay? And who was going to pay for it? How much were they going to spend? Where was all these hundreds of thousands of dollars going to come from? How much did they expect to make? And how was Gallegos going to account for all this money? And how was it going to be spent? Was this all for Cotchett? Is that how he gets paid? By corrupting the judicial system? Ends justify the means?

All these questions remain unanswered.

There's alot of talk about bringing the Attorney General up here now for the Glass/Arkley debacle. While he's here, maybe he can look into some of this.
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Related:
New York Post - MOVEON'S SMEAR: A VILE NEW LOW - September 11, 2007
New York Times THE PUBLIC EDITOR Betraying Its Own Best Interests
FOR nearly two weeks, The New York Times has been defending a political advertisement that critics say was an unfair shot at the American commander in Iraq.
But I think the ad violated The Times’s own written standards, and the paper now says that the advertiser got a price break it was not entitled to...
New York Times Public Editor Rebukes MoveOn.org's Petraeus Ad Sunday, September 23, 2007
The New York Times acknowledged Sunday that a controversial advertisement attacking Gen. David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, was sold to a liberal activist group at a discount rate the organization was not entitled to receive, and that the paper violated its own advertising policies when it published the ad...