Where is the line when determining acceptable advertising content? A few years back the concept of front-page advertising was sacrilegous, yet today even the venerable New York Times has picked it up. As newspaper revenue slipped, and then tumbled away, we’ve all asked ourselves, what’s next?

Well, today we found out. The Daily Bruin, our sister paper down at UCLA, ran a full-page ad for Haagen-Dazs on their front page. Their entire front page. The ad was designed to look like the front page of the Bruin and included their masthead, articles and photos, except that each instance of the letter “b” had been removed. On page two, Haagen-Daaz ran a full-page ad calling on readers to buy vanilla honey-bee ice cream to support the company’s bee-friendly garden. (We’re happy that at least they didn’t remove the letter from the masthead. They might never live down “The Daily ‘Ruin.”) For more, see the post over at Innovation in College Media, aptly headlined “Not the sort of innovation we need.”

A couple months back, Haagen-Dazs approached us about the same ad. Knowing that given our finanical condition we shouldn’t turn down any revenue outright, I took the proposal to the Senior Editorial Board. Much to my delight, I was laughed out of the room. This is clearly a step too far. And apparently, the Daily Bruin editors agree. In an editorial they released today, the editors called the decision to run the ad “distasteful at best – and dishonest and unethical at worst.” We know the editors down there, and know they are neither dishonest or unethical. But it does seem they let threats about thousands of dollars worth of budget cuts get the best of them.

Thankfully, we found a much more appetizing solution at the Daily Cal. In today’s paper a similar ad ran on pages 5 and 6. While the page 5 ad was designed to look like a newspaper page, it did not include our name (aside from the folio which runs on every page, regardless of advertising). While the ad might have given cause for some pause, I think in the end it was pretty clear that it was advertising content. Still, not everyone around our office is pleased with how the ad came out. The best news of all was that we were able to retain 100 percent of the promised advertising revenue in this arrangement that we would have received by selling off the front page. I don’t know if the same option was open to the Bruin staff.

The rules are changing, and it’s becoming a lot more difficult to turn down cash. We must be creative in the way we pioneer new advertising models, and we must take risks. Certainly the Daily Cal lags behind, being one of the few papers that hasn’t started some form of front-page advertising. But it is entirely distasteful to intentionally deceive our readers using our own masthead and design in the same space where we are duty-bound to inform the readers of matters of public interest.

I’m glad that the Bruin’s editor Anthony Pesce wrote that the paper won’t be accepting this kind of advertising again, at least in the forseeable future. I think when the dust clears they will realize that the world has not ended, and the award-winning paper will still go on to produce great student journalism. I hope that this instance can be an impetus for college newspapers around the country to review their advertising standards and start discussions about the issue. That’s certainly the message we got at the Daily Cal.