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Four more advertisers drop out of police-union newsletter

UPDATE, Friday afternoon: Houghton-Mifflin just announced it won't advertise anymore in Pax Centurion, the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association newsletter, known for its offensive comments about people and groups it doesn't like:

BPPA newsletter does not reflect the values of HMH and we will discontinue our advertising in this publication immediately. HMH's ad in BPPA newsletter was intended to support the scholarship fund that benefits families of Police Officers and EMTs.

Also Friday afternoon, Natixis Global AM, an investment company, vowed to end its ads:

BPPA Ad was in support of scholarship fund. We still support fund but don’t condone inappropriate content & Ad won’t appear in future.

Both Harpoon Brewery and LoJack Corp. said yesterday they will no longer advertise in Pax Centurion.

Harpoon Brewery tweeted:

We don't support the views in #BPPA newsletter & won't put an ad there again. We were surprised & regret letting you down!

LoJack, whose systems police use to find stolen cars and people who repeatedly go missing, posted a similar tweet, and references a BPPA scholarship fund:

our ad in Pax Centurion was intended 2 support the fund, not offensive content We don't have future plans to ad in newsletter

LoJack's tweet was in response to a query from an organizer at Occupy Boston (one of Pax Centurion's favorite targets) asking:

The ‪#BPPA‬ newsletter makes necrophilia jokes about Egyptian women. Are you okay with your ad standing next to that?

The two join Simmons College, which earlier this week announced it would no longer take out full-page ads in the newsletter because of its content.

Via BostInno.

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Comments

There's a good chance that they don't even know what kind of material their ads are appearing alongside.

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source here: http://www.universalhub.com/2012/simmons-college-d...

Copypasta here:

For what it's worth, here are the other sponsors/donors who have taken out ad space in the May/June issue of the Boston police union's paper:

Altria
Heath Properties (lists Beacon Hotel, Mistral, Inn @ St. Botolph, Teatro)
Archon Group
City of Boston Credit Union
BMC/BU Medical Campus
Brickman
Taurus Investment Holdings
Copley Place Simon
Safety Insurance
Mt Washington Bank
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Babson Capital Management
Liberty Mutual
Stop and Shop
Harvard Pilgrim
Blackstone Group and Equity
Glock
LoJack - Already released a statement
Natixis Global Asset Management
People's United Bank
Lincoln Property Management and 84 State Street
Harpoon Brewery - Already released a statement
AEW
Merck Putnam Investments
The Boston Company Asset Management
Blue Line Financial LLC
Parters Healthcare
CRA International
McCourt Construction
EMD Serono
TIAA Cref
SITQ
Shaws/Star Market

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If the cops are as hard up as they like to claim to be, how come I don't seen Walmart, McDonalds and the Dollar Store on there?

Shocking!

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here is a list of companies that wont be supporting UniveralHub - EVER

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My husband and I contacted our bank, which had advertised. A senior vice president called my husband back and told him the bank thought they were giving to the scholarship fund and they were not happy to see the content their ad was appearing with.

My guess is that's what a lot of these folks thought.

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What bank was that? We're keeping a spreadsheet and want to know who's been successfully alerted.

As you say, it seems nobody knew what they were supporting.

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Looks like Adam @univeralhub isn't going to be getting any of these advertisers for his site.

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.. the mysterious "univeralhub" has been mentioned. What, pray, might it be? A venerial disease pandemic would be my guess.

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Why would that be? Because Adam doesn't publish hate speech?

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As a craft beer lover, it's great to see a longtime brewer take a stand on something like this. I pass on Harpoon more often than I drink it, but tonight it's going to be Harpoon IPA and UFO all the way.

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It's going to be 90

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I think you're misreading something. That list is people/companies who "have taken out ad space". That doesn't mean they've REMOVED their ads from the newsletter, it means they've paid to have their ad in the newsletter. I certainly HOPE that Harpoon pulls their ad, but they haven't yet.

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What Simmons, Harpoon and LoJack have all said is that they won't be taking out any ads in the future in the newsletter, now that their marketing departments (I assume) have actually looked at its contents and heard complaints from alums/customer.

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Crap, you're right. My eyes glazed right over the mention of Harpoon in the original posting. YAY HARPOON! :)

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Correct. As I understand advertising, especially with print media (which is how the Pax Centurion seems to operate) you pay for ad space in an upcoming issue, or for a run of upcoming issues. Which means basically that these advertisers have already paid. Can't un-print something once it's out there. What they're promising to do is stop paying for this ad space. So, the next issue (or in a few issues' time, depending on the contract), those ads will stop showing up.

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Read the blog post, above - there is a link to a tweet from Harpoon that they will pull their ads in the future.

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The at-large city councilor tweets:

I'm disgusted by the continued racist, sexist & homophobic comments spewing from this man in Pax Centurion.

Also state Rep. Carlos Henriquez:

I am not surprised, raised in this city, I have heard those ideals spewed first hand. It is a disservice to good cops.

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Strange that besides UHub and Bostinno, and the discussions on reddit, there hasn't been a lick of mainstream media coverage. I know newspaper and TV people read Universal Hub, so some of them must be aware of this story ...

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Well, it took a week or so before WBZ picked up on the planters blocking sidewalks.

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But that's not surprising, as it's obvious that their news desk regularly trawls monitors UHub for inner metro stories.

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.

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TV/newspapers rely on rank+file to tell them what's going on "off the record", or to let them get a clear view of a crash scene, etc. If they print what's going on, all the rank+file will start telling them to buzz off.

Whenever they're not talking about something, it's because they don't want to bite the hand feeding them. That's why you rarely see critical coverage of the mayor.

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There's no end to news stories critical of the police, whether it's about exhorbitant overtime costs or missing drugs or a low clearance rate or someone getting arrested for videotaping an arrest or whatever.

I bet if you searched for the 20 most commented-on threads here at UHub, 10 of them would start with a link to a negative Globe or Herald article about BPD. And yet, almost every day, there is some crime article in either paper in which cops are quoted as anonymous sources "familiar with the investigation."

*The others would include bicycles, the T, and/or the phrase "special snowflakes".

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Wasn't the March "ad boycott" against Rush Limbaugh supposed to knock him off the air, for once and for all? Or the anti-Limbaugh ad boycott in 2006 after he called out Michael J. Fox for exagerrating the effects of his Parkinson's in a TV ad for Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Senator who is now skipping this year's Democrat convention? Oops. Freedom of speech, so long as it's "progressive". Ha!

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O-Fishy, time to reread the posts above that point out that freedom of speech also includes the right to criticize offensive speech. And the free market is only free if consumers can make choices (publically and in groups if they desire) about which businesses to support.

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whenever I want to feel younger, I listen to people complain about capitalism, "big business", police, inadequate bike paths and "homophobic, racist" people who will be cured if they just give me a little more of their money. All of a sudden, it's 1968 again. Anything is possible. Don't worry, we'll let you know when we have enough. You want to see pissed off cops? Go to the city run by your idols, Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama's Machine. Their handiwork is turning out just splendidly, I must say. You're safer in Kabul. Our cops are like Mr. Rogers compared to those in Chicago. They do more tune-ups than Click & Clack.

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Chicago had a bad police culture before Rahm Emanuel or Barack Obama was born, but nice to see a partisan hack trying to lay that problem at their feet....

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