It seems Barack Obama has jumped on the video bandwagon as well, based on his advertising prior to the Texas and Ohio primaries.

In what MediaWeek describes as "the first major Web effort for a presidential candidate to incorporate video", the Obama campaign placed banner-style paid advertisements, replete with video of Obama speaking and other interactive features, on 26 local media websites, including The Houston Chronicle, the Akron-based Beacon Journal, and The Cincinnati Enquirer.

This begs the question, however: what are the ads doing there in the first place? Would that not mislead readers into thinking the papers are endorsing Obama? Poynter columnist Bill Mitchell and freelancer Steve Myers had the same questions, and decided to send out questionnaires to editors at news organizations that featured the ad, and to those that did not.

Among the questions they asked:

-How did you decide to accept/reject the ad? How might you approach your decision differently if the ad had been of the attack variety?

-How much risk is there that readers will view the ad as support for the candidate by the paper as opposed to paid political advertising?

-If you ran the ad, what feedback have you gotten from readers? Did you explain the decision to run the ad to readers?

-Might your decision about the ad have been different if business conditions were different?

Mitchell and Myers plan to post the responses as they come in. Thus far, The Dallas Morning News has responded, where editor Bob Mong believes there was "very little risk" of readers misinterpreting the ad.

Tom Callinan of The Cincinnati Enquirer has also responded, and confirmed that business conditions were not and would not be a factor in such a decision.

Source: PoynterOnline