Lebanon Voice ad content too sensitive ... seriously?

The Lebanon Voice on Friday sought to place a radio ad with a local station.

The station said they would have no problem getting the ad on the air on Friday, since it was just a 30-second voice ad.

The purpose of the ad was to let area listeners know that The Lebanon Voice beat Foster’s Daily Democrat on two major breaking news stories during the week.

The two stories were:

No. 1. Police say Leslie Pollard confessed to Dec. hit and run, which The Lebanon Voice had on Wednesday and Foster’s had on Thursday.

No. 2. Police say no evidence found on Karen Pollard cellphone, which The Lebanon Voice had on Friday and Foster’s had on Saturday.

The Lebanon Voice beats Foster’s a lot of the time. They sometimes beat The Lebanon Voice. Neither paper is immune to being beaten by the other.

But when the little The Lebanon Voice beats them twice in one week on one of the biggest stories in Rochester for 2014, that’s significant, The Lebanon Voice decided.

So we decided to place an ad. The radio station said they could put it on Friday as soon as they received a digital file by email.

They said if the audio was weak they could do a voiceover.

The Lebanon Voice sent the file, but never heard back from the salesperson by phone.

Instead we got an email saying the ad had subject matter that was too sensitive.

A few hours later we got another email that raised the price to get the ad on the air by several hundred dollars and that the ad would require extensive production time.

In the news business time is money. A story has a certain shelf life. So does an ad.

What’s even more curious to The Lebanon Voice is why would this radio station, which bills itself as a news station and which, itself, reported both stories alluded to in the ad, consider the subject matter too sensitive. They had run the stories themselves!

Maybe they just wanted to save someone, or some paper, some embarrassment.

Here’s a link to the ad exactly as The Lebanon Voice produced it. We ask you to share it with anyone who might be interested in getting the news in a timely fashion. http://youtu.be/RVBB7HECZmc