General Motors Corp., angry about what it calls “inaccurate” coverage of the automaker in the Los Angeles Times, disclosed Thursday that it has pulled all GM advertising from the California newspaper “for the foreseeable future.”
“We were hearing strongly voiced objections from our dealers in California and from within GM regarding factual errors and misrepresentations” in the paper’s coverage, GM spokesman Ryndee Carney said in an interview Thursday.
Although GM and L.A. Times owner Tribune Co. declined to quantify the amount the company spends with the paper, the automaker’s ad business is thought to be significant–enough to inflict a financial sting at the paper.
Tribune Co. also owns the Chicago Tribune.
It is “too early,” a Tribune spokesman said, “to comment on what impact their decision with regard to advertising in the L.A. Times might have on [Tribune Co.’s] second-quarter” financial results.
GM is yanking all its corporate advertising, ads for specific GM brands, and all ads placed by the regional GM dealer association. The action does not include ads that individual GM dealers purchase on their own.
The Tribune Co. spokesman said, “We have a very good relationship with General Motors,” and Tribune is holding “ongoing, candid conversations with GM.”
GM’s move comes at a time when the Times has been troubled by an unexpectedly sharp falloff in circulation, and by a stubbornly soft advertising market in Southern California.
“It wasn’t any one story or article or writer, but an accumulation over time” of news stories and editorials about GM products, Carney said.
An L.A. Times spokesman said the paper “will look into any complaints GM has about inaccuracy or misrepresentations and will make any appropriate corrections.”
GM’s Carney said that “as a general policy, we don’t pull ads from media outlets and it’s a rare occurrence when we do.”
GM executives may have been particularly unhappy with an April 6 piece written by Dan Neil, the paper’s auto writer. Neil bluntly listed what he called the company’s numerous operating problems, offered a detailed, point-by-point criticism of the recently introduced Pontiac G6 sedan, and proposed the ouster of GM Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner.
Neil’s column closed with the observation that “When ballclubs have losing records, players and coaches and managers get their walking papers.” At GM, the 45-year-old Neil wrote, “it’s time to sweep the dugout.”
Neil, who in 2004 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for criticism for his auto columns, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
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jpmiller@tribune.com
