D-G Testimonials Getting Worse (Outtakes Opinion)

We wrote in our March 15 issue that some of the testimonial advertisements the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has been running were lukewarm at best. Since then, we’ve seen more of them, and they just keep getting worse.

On April 12, Fred Vorsanger, manager of Bud Walton Arena at the University of Arkansas, was quoted in his ad saying, “The subscription price of the Democrat-Gazette with the Northwest Arkansas Times is certainly a very fair bargain.”

At 15 cents per day (the annual subscription rate when we checked on April 13), subscribers get the D-G and either the Times or Benton County Daily Record.

The Times got a ringing endorsement in its own pages on April 15 when Jeff Watson, a Springdale city alderman, said in his ad: “I primarily read the Democrat-Gazette, but I do open the Times for sports coverage.”

Also in the D-G/Times on April 12, Joe Fennel, owner of Jose’s Mexican Restaurant and Bordino’s Italian restaurant in Fayetteville, was quoted as saying, “Everybody I talk to in town must read the Democrat-Gazette, because when we talk about local issues everybody has a take that I’ve seen in the Democrat-Gazette. I would venture to say that most of my friends read the Democrat-Gazette.”

Besides using such a confusing quote, the D-G misspelled Fennel’s name.

It seems like The Morning News of Springdale could use some of the D-G testimonials in an in-house advertising campaign of its own. Apparently, at least some of these people were tiptoeing around because they don’t want to say they support the D-G over The Morning News.