To be fair, The Examiner is co-sponsoring the event that was being advertised; so they're not completely giving away control of the front page. (They're saying goodbye to actual news.) And fortunately, even with the regal Examiner eagle perched atop the page (twice!), it's pretty easy to tell that it's not actually news that you're looking at. But imagine if someone put up something that was a little more camouflaged: For example, what if The Ex let Fiona Ma purchase their front page for a few days (far-fetched, we know) and used it to repeatedly re-print the article in which The Ex endorsed her. That information would look almost sorta kinda credible, wouldn't it?

Of course, in that case, The Examiner staff, exercising their journalistic concern for transparency, would probably say, "um, please stop making it look like we're the ones repeating this information," as politely as possible. And they probably aren't about to permit the adoption of their identity by anyone who just happens to agree with them. So ... really ... that whole hypothetical nightmare scenario could never ever possibly come true. Whew.

We posed some questions (and more!) about this to The Examiner's advertising department on Thursday, and they explained, "A representative will contact you regarding your request." Still waiting.

voluntarily