From our NYT: All the News That We See Fit desk

Thursday’s New York Times Business section features this piece from ad maven Stuart Elliott:

Renaming the Circulation Overseer

AN organization devoted to the data and decimal points of audits for almost a century decided to evaluate itself and, as a result, is adopting a new identity.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations — founded by advertisers, agencies and publishers in 1914 to ensure accuracy in the reporting of circulation figures — is becoming, effective immediately, the Alliance for Audited Media.

And the new alliance has big plans to promote itself:

The organization will promote the rebranding with a campaign to run in advertising space donated by member publications; the value of the space is being estimated at more than $600,000. The campaign, by an agency in Chicago, Harris D. McKinney, will carry this theme: “We’ve changed our name. Not what we stand for.”

What the Times piece fails to mention is that one of the ads IS RUNNING ON THE OPPOSITE PAGE.

Presumably, given the final line of copy (“This publication proudly stands with thousands of other members of the new Alliance for Audited Media”), the Times “donated the space” for the ad.

The thing is, Stuart Elliott should have said so.