The Press and its Back to School “Guide”
We are just a few weeks away from school starting again and as we mentioned in a recent post the level of back to school advertising is off the charts. Parents might be worried about the financial future of their school district, but JC Penny and Meijer are interested selling stuff to your kids.
The back to school advertising has escalated in recent years as has been documented by groups like Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood and Stop Targeting Our Kids (STOK). We see it in magazines, on billboards, TV, online, even through text messages. You can now add to all these advertising mediums, journalism.
Yesterday, the Grand Rapids Press ran as its feature story in the “Your Life” section an article that essentially was a commercial ad for back to school items. Entitled, “An Untraditional Guide to Going Back to School,” the story by reporter Linda Odette reads like advertising copy, since it provides all sorts of consumer tips and suggestions for branded products.
The article also included a contest that the newspaper is hosting to win a backpack and other “goodies,” plus a plug for the Shop Til You Rock tour for teens, which will be at a local mall. This teen music tour is being sponsored by numerous companies and is designed to do nothing more than to get teens and pre-teens to buy clothing and other items that young singers like Demi Lovato have.
The Press article ends with links to several sites that have coupons and shopping deals, like Savings Angel, which the Press includes in the Your Life section daily.
To add insult to injury, the Press reporter talks down to some parents early on in the article when talking about what “good parents” do: “Make a shopping budget. Make sure they get a good breakfast. Make lunch the night before. Seriously. If you’re a good parent, you’ve probably been doing this stuff for years. If you’re a not-so-good parent, it’s probably too late to start.”
Instead of insulting parents and acting as a promotional wing for companies trying to profit off of targeting children maybe the Press might consider providing information about how parents can deal with the hyper-commercialism that their children are confronted with.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
I got my hopes up at the beginning of the article where the Odette bemoaned the barrage of back-to-school ads. But alas…
The bento box was probably the closest she came to offering something of potential value, simply for the sake that it encourages a diversity of food offerings that aren’t pre-packaged and processed. Of course one would not need to invest in an expensive, stylish box to pack such a lunch…
Dreaming of a day when commercial media bashes commercialism? Not sure that’s on our horizon soon.
Janet, thanks for the comments and observations. I definitely don’t have any expectations that the Press will challenge commercialism, but I think it is always important to call out institutions that claim to practice journalism.