Sixty KPA members join political ad initiative

About a third of Kansas Press AssociatIon member newspapers have signed up for the "Race for Space," an initiative designed to capture some of the political advertising dollars in 2016.

KPA's plan is called the "Race for Space." We're asking our newspapers to commit up to two full pages of space in their newspapers at 50 percent off to shake up this advertising monopoly that we've faced all these years.

Click here to see a PDF of the promotional flyer that explains the program.

"As of today, we have about 60 newspapers signed up for the program, including a number of the state's daily newspapers," said Doug Anstaett, KPA executive director. "They've expressed to us that it's worth a shot to try to free up some of these advertising dollars. We hope most of our member newspapers agree."

KPA Advertising Director Amber Jackson is going to push this hard from our office. We're going to contact all the candidates for president, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, the committees representing the Kansas Supreme Court justices who are up for retention this year and other PACs and special interest groups (i.e. Kansas Hospital Association, Kansas Contractors Association, Open Kansas) who we assume will be trying to influence this year's primary and general elections. Another target will be those organizations working on the Kansas Supreme Court and Appeals Court retention issue.

"We hope you agree to support this project by committing at least the equivalent of 252 column inches of space in your newspapers (that's two full pages of space if you're a broadsheet)," Jackson said.