First? Nuts to that! I was just on Madison's school website and saw sponsor ads for Mustang Seeds and Ampride on the Maroon school newspaper site. Take that, Harrisburg! You may take away the Mundt Debate Tournament, but we beat you into school advertising!
Oh, but wait: we might be violating South Dakota Department of Education policy:
The Department of Education, which hosts Harrisburg's site and other South Dakota school district Web sites, has a policy that does not allow advertising of any kind.
...School districts across South Dakota connect to the state server as a cost saver, said Wade Pogany of the Department of Education. Pogany said he is not aware of a state list of school districts that advertise on their own private pages.
We have a specific policy that says sites can't solicitate for or have commercial advertising materials because it is hosted by the state," Pogany said [Dalton Walker, "Harrisburg School District Delves into Ads on Net," that Sioux Falls paper, 2010.02.08].
Walker's article isn't clear, largely because the MSM still doesn't know how to use hyperlinks effectively, but it appears Harrisburg plans to offer ads through its noisy Tiger Nation boosters website, which is not hosted on the K-12 server and thus not subject to DoE policy.
The Madison Maroon ads are on the k12.sd.us domain.
Superintendent Schaefer, I have Mr. Pogany on line one....
They are listed as a "sponsor". They don't have a banner ad. We have a link for Black Studios on the DSU site because we are a corporate sponsor. I see no difference here. The school newspaper is online and not in printed form. Why is an ad in printed for acceptable for a school paper and not an online one?
ReplyDeleteMichael,
ReplyDeleteYou don't have an ad on the DSU website. A .edu domain name cannot be used for commercial (advertising) purposes. This is why DSU's athletics has its own website, www.dsuathletics.com, which is where your ad is at.