Ads versus articles in the Saturday BC Edition of the Globe and Mail, A Section

By area, there are more ads than reports and opinion pieces in this A section of the BC Edition of the Globe and Mail.

By Sherwin Arnott Media
There are more ads than articles in the June 2nd BC Edition of the A Section of the Globe and Mail.

Here’s the A Section of the Globe and Mail. It’s the BC edition for June 2nd, 2018. There are 19 reports and 5 opinion pieces. I counted the weather section on page 22 as a report, and also the Donkey Kong “Moment” on page 2, but nothing on the cover. The cover is arguably editorial content, and there are ads to articles that might be paid content, but I decided to simply divide everything up into “ads or not ads” and gave the cover a pass, so 0% ads.1

There are 28 distinct ads. But I’m more interested in area, since this is really how advertising is sold.

So I coded ads yellow and articles blue for visual affect. I estimated the area that each takes up on each page and you can see the percentage on each page. 2

After totalling the areas on every page I found that ads took up over half of this A Section by area: 55%. There are more ads than reports and opinion pieces combined.

Globe and Mail BC Edition cover
Cover, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 2 and 3
Pages 2 & 3, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 4 and 5
Pages 4 & 5, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 6 and 7
Pages 6 & 7, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 8 and 9
Pages 8 & 9, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 10 and 11
Pages 10 & 11, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 12 and 13
Pages 12 & 13, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 14 and 15
Pages 14 & 15, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 16 and 17
Pages 16 & 17, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 18 and 19
Pages 18 & 19, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 20 and 21
Pages 20 & 21, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 22 and 23
Pages 22 & 23, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
Globe and Mail BC Edition page 24
Back page, Globe and Mail, BC Edition, 2018 June 2.
  1. I also ignored white space and assumed every page adds up to 100%. ↩
  2. Now some hold that opinion pieces are not journalism. I do believe that opinion pieces are journalism, however I also hold that all journalism is a from of public relations (in the same way that all humans are animals). ↩