How To Succeed in Advertising Without Really Trying

Hey, Tarrant County, if you're wondering where all that Barnett Shale money is going, rest easy. It's not all going to private jets, shag carpeting and right-wing think tanks. Chesapeake Energy, one of the big players in the Barnett Shale drilling, is funneling some of it back into newspapers, God love'em. CEO Aubrey McClendon placed spent $400,000 placing full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Raleigh News & Observer and Durham Herald-Sun to praise Duke's lacrosse team players for "standing tall during extraordinarily difficult circumstances over the past 15 months." He tried to keep his name from being inked to the full-page ads, but newspapers prohibit anonymous advertising. Now I agree that the entire Duke incident was a miscarriage of justice, but I'm not sure that saluting these young men as paragons of virtue and integrity is appropriate either. But, hey, what am I bitching about? Newspapers really need that money. So carry on!