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Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
But for the most part they are an attempt to sway public opinion and extol or deride a particular candidate or ideal. Very seldom do they stick completely with facts and they use well-known techniques to "lead" the reader to specific conclusions.
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I always thought that's what an editorial was supposed to be. Although if there was any part of the newspaper to be cut out, that's the part I would cut.
When chains started buying up local papers, one of the criticisms I recall was that corporate dictated namby-pamby editorials which won't offend anyone because they didn't say where the paper's editorial board stood. This of course was decades ago, as it would be absurd to claim there isn't enough bloviating (myself included) nowadays.
It's important to keep editorials clearly distinct from news, and advertising distinct from both of them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
But I'm also sure that when a publisher is spending big bucks on ads, it does give them an edge in getting some books reviewed and noticed.
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My recollection is that Vantage Press, the original vanity publisher, used to have advertisements in almost every issue of serious magazines that feature book reviews, such as the Atlantic, New Republic, Harpers, etc. It didn't get them any reviews.
If the New York Times Sunday Book Review favored advertisers, when writers left their employ, they would run, not walk, to a serious magazine and sell them an exposé. And I haven't seen any like that.
Note that they rarely if ever review books published by Amazon, even though Amazon's occasional Sunday newspaper stuffers (4 pages or so) probably make them a bigger advertiser than any of the dreaded Big 6 or university presses whose books they often review.
Failure to review self-published books may be an artistic mistake, but it's not cow-towing to big advertisers.