Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2024 March 3

= March 3 =

Newspaper in Emergency
Whenever their has been a big news like 911/ death of Queen etc., newspaper often publish full front page with that news, or at least cover major chunk of front page with that news. What happens to advertisements which were paid to be shown on front page for that day? How do they handle other things? Exclusive Editor  Notify Me! 14:47, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Guessing. I suppose it varies from paper to paper and whether time allows it. I would suggest everything is pushed to subsequent pages, or if it is possible stories are just ditched in favour of the breaking news. As for the ads, I gather either money is returned outright if it's too late to sort of call and clarify the situation, or the advertisers are just reimbursed in some way. Mind you, if a paper is to appear in the newsstands in the morning it still has to be typeset and printed, and that takes time. I guess it all depends how last-minute the news is. If there is enough time the editors are bound to reshuffle everything and keep it tidy, contact advertisers or internally discuss whether to do a full front page big news story or just do half-page reserving the other half for other things like other stories or ads or whatever. --Ouro (blah blah) 16:22, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I haven't looked at a newspaper in years,but back when I did it was pretty much unheard of to have ads on the front page. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 00:27, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Same here. I don't know how it works in Britain, but in America I've never seen ads on the front page. At least not recently. In the 19th century, it was another thing: want-ads and such on the front page were fairly common, intermingled among the news items. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:09, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Just for fun, I'll point out that one British paper, the (London) Times, used to devote its entire front page to little advertisements. In 1966 they decided that maybe all the other papers had a better idea and started putting news there. --142.112.220.50 (talk) 03:00, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, so I clarify: I currently live in a very small town (50k) and we have one or two little local papers that run ads all over the place, including the front page. Large national papers will have some kind of ads on the front page too, but not always. Back in the 1990s when the paper was a regular thing at my parents' home I remember that it was rather usual for smaller or larger ads to be on the front page, especially on broadsheets. --Ouro (blah blah) 06:12, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * If this is typical newspapers don't guarantee to put advertisements in any specific location. 2A00:23D0:D89:2D01:80C2:2E34:5AE:16BF (talk) 09:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I have seen various newspapers (local and national) contain full front page advertisement (though occasionally), it is usually done in large marketing campaigns. Once a newspaper reverted all photos on front page to advertise toothpaste's freshness. Exclusive  Editor  Notify Me! 09:48, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * "Stop press" and "Latest" were very different. The box you referred to would be a "Latest" or "Late news" box which could be printed into by a separate stereotype, basically an overprint.  "Stop press" and "Hold the front page" much beloved of Holywood referred to recasting the whole front page and would only be done in extremis.  Do bear in mind though that the larger national (UK) papers went through several editions as the night wore on. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:29, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The expression beloved of Hollywood (double L there) is "stop the presses". (And I remember one relatively modern movie, possibly I Love Trouble, where someone runs into the pressroom and gives that order and nothing happens, because hey, they don't do that any more.)  But I've seen newspapers or reproductions of same, that had what Martin calls a "late news" box and it was titled "stop press news".  I'm sure the paper or papers I'm thinking of were British but I have no recollection of which. --142.112.220.50 (talk) 14:27, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * This discussion is drifting away from the topic, and it seems it has become a unrelated forum. Exclusive  Editor  Notify Me! 14:34, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thepaperboy.com allows you to see UK paper front pages for specific dates. The page for Friday, 9 September 2022 shows no adverts. Most of the papers have a (near) full page photo, except the Independent and Evening Standard, which apparently missed the big news. By comparison some of the papers from two days earlier have adverts. As for what happens to the missing adverts, hopefully 2A00:23D0:D89:2D01:80C2:2E34:5AE:16BF's answer suffices. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 13:18, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Also by the way, the Toronto Sun is a tabloid and likes to use a magazine-style front cover with just a photo, a headline, and maybe some small text pointing to other items inside. I would only read it if I come across a discarded copy. One day I did that and saw that the front cover showed Leonid Brezhnev under the headline "BREZHNEV DIES", so I looked through the paper to see what other information they had. And the interesting part is, there wasn't any. So they hadn't had to remake anything but the front cover to run that "story". --142.112.220.50 (talk) 14:35, 4 March 2024 (UTC)