Recently I have been on the barracades against the negative bias towards newspapers. TV is dead and now newspapers? Sorry I don’t belief that they will disappear anywhere soon. A downfall in subscriptions? Might be… but when mobile handsets sales drop 5% do we than also proclaim that Mobiel telephony is dead? Newspapers like any other traditional medium will have to adjust and that mighthurt but newspapers have both a generation effect as well as an intrinsic social value that will keep them floating for quite a while BUT… after hours of debate recently I received the Volkskrant today… it stated on the frontpage a scientific research breaktrough: Drink like Yakult actually do have effect (the brand name wasn’t mentioned). Interesting article until I finished the paper and closed the back-end… a GIAGANTIC add from Yakult… A(*!^&@^ that totally diminishes both the brand-value of Yakult and the journalistic integrity of the paper… WHO DID THIS? Than just now the NRC dropped in my mailbox… front-page news is the online trend of de-friending (you onliners know the Facebook BurgerKing campaign where you had to defriend 10 buddies to receive a new bruger)… great, original campaign… four weeks ago… If this time-lag and prioritizing news is exemplary for NRC than oooh my god!