Abstract

Newsrooms are well known for their distaste for advertising. Indeed, editorial departments are often housed as far away from sales staff as possible. This deliberate distancing is one way in which news professionals emphasize their objectivity. News organizations pride themselves on maintaining the separation between advertising and editorial content. No matter how much the press may protest, news, after all, is a bottom-line business—a business that depends on advertising revenue to survive. This reality makes it necessary for news organizations, not only to attract advertisers, but also to advertise to attract audiences. One of the methods of advertising is the use of slogans to differentiate themselves in an increasingly cluttered news landscape. This study examines the use of slogans in promoting news organizations. Elements of effective slogans are examined. Researchers coded over 500 slogans from U.S. news organizations in terms of brand identification, superlatives, news values, literary devices, and types of message to determine the level of effectiveness in differentiating the particular news organization. This research also compares the slogans used by daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, online news sources and television news to examine possible differences. This study bridges a gap in communication research by bringing together the fields of journalism and advertising from a previously unexplored perspective.