The tobacco industry doesn't do much newspaper advertising these days, so it was noticeable when ads for R.J. Reynolds products began appearing in The N&O recently.

The company has run two ads for its Kool XL cigarettes in the past month in The N&O's What's Up section. It's also been promoting Camel Snus, a smokeless tobacco product, over the last several months.

The Kool ad was not cool with some readers. "Perhaps I was naive, but in view of the News & Observer's editorial support of smoke-free air laws, I didn't expect you to be so hypocritical as to seek advertising revenues from the promotion of smoking," Michael Schwalbe, of Chapel Hill, wrote in an e-mail.

Sherryl Kleinman, also of Chapel Hill, noted that the full-page Kool ad ran adjacent to the "Back-to-School College Survival Guide" in the What's Up section -- which is The N&O's entertainment section targeted to a younger demographic. "Is it a coincidence that the ad runs in conjunction with a story on college fashion?" she asked. "I doubt it. Given many college-age students' investment in looking cool, what could be better advertising than running an ad for a harmful product called KOOL?"

You don't see much cigarette advertising in the media these days. Broadcast advertising of tobacco products has been banned by the federal government since 1971. The 1999 national tobacco settlement banned billboard advertising. It's still legal in newspapers, but tobacco companies in recent years have shunned newspapers in favor of more targeted advertising, such as in-store promotions and direct mail.

"I think it was more of a strategic decision that they got more bang for their buck out of point-of-purchase, Internet and e-mail advertising, and slotting fees" for product placement in stores, said Paul Bloom, senior research scholar at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, who has studied the industry.

Jim McClure, The N&O's vice president for display advertising, said the ads were the first for tobacco products that he could recall in perhaps three years.

He said he personally dislikes smoking, but that doesn't stop The N&O from accepting tobacco advertising. It's little different, he said, from running ads for other products that some readers might find objectionable, such as for alcohol or guns or, for that matter, bacon, which can also kill you. "Despite all the negatives that go with tobacco and the reaction to all that, it's still a legal product," he said.

McClure said withholding or banning ads because of its content would run counter to a newspaper's commitment to an open and free exchange of ideas and information. As he wrote to one of the complaining readers: "There is a fine line between censoring ads and allowing ads to be published that might offend some readers. Our practice has been to err on the side of publishing advertising if it comes from a business that sells a legal product or service. Such is the case with the Kool cigarette ad."

The newspaper has ultimate responsibility for what it publishes, in news or advertising, and it does routinely reject or require changes in ads. The test, McClure said, is whether the ad has content "that a significant number of our readers would find objectionable." Examples: ads that make unreasonable claims for health or financial products, or suggestive content in "adult entertainment" ads. (As it happens, a reader called me Wednesday to complain about a "Topless Beach Party" ad in the sports section.)

No one objected to the Kool ad the first time it ran, nor to the dozen or so Snus ads. What made the Aug. 17 Kool ad so noticeable was its placement next to the college fashion section. McClure said that was happenstance, not intentional. The ad ran where it did, he said, because it was full color and press limitations dictate the pages where color can run.

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