Much of the newspaper industry is wringing its hands over the appearance of front-page advertisements at some of the nation's largest dailies.

The Tribune Co.'s newspapers are planning to sell Page One ads, with the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Long Island's Newsday already talking to advertisers.

Just the mere mention of these ads caused about 140 readers to call the Tribune to object, some saying the ads diminish the reputation of the paper and compromise its objectivity and quality.

Others believe that while other sections of the paper are free to accept advertising, the front page is sacrosanct and should be kept free of commercial interests.

The Los Angeles Times formed a committee of news, circulation and marketing employees to study the issue and concluded that selling ads on the front page would risk "alienating readers, who will view the disappearance of an A1 story as yet another cutback." The publisher disagreed and said the Times will pursue the ads, despite a petition circulating in the newsroom urging him to reconsider.

The irony is that this argument is happening at a time of enormous financial pressure on newspapers and their online operations to boost revenue. Newspaper staffs are being trimmed and newspaper companies are switching hands more frequently.

As the editor of a paper whose history included ads on its very first front page in 1856, I find it hard to argue that we shouldn't have advertising on Page One, and, in fact, we've been doing so more recently in the past five years. USA Today did so in 1999 and more recently, the Wall Street Journal and many other papers.

When they were first introduced here a few years back, they were admittedly jarring. Though I'd rather have the space for more news, they do not especially bother me now.

I do not believe we are lowering our standards by accepting advertising in places where we haven't seen it before, such as the top of the Island Life page, the bottom of the "My Communities" page or those floating blocks of ads by Hawaiian Electric Co. that sometimes appear.

However, advertising has to be marked as such, and ads made to look like newspaper pages bother me immensely. I also am sensitive to ad configurations that are so overwhelming that they make the stories difficult to read.

Advertising provides dollars that we need to do our work, and instead of protests against Page One ads, we should be directing our energy to making sure we are not diminishing the resources we have to gather news. If a 1 1/2-inch-high advertisement, by its placement on the front page, brings in extra dollars that allow someone to take photos, edit a print story or contribute an online post, I'm not going to object.

Besides, our profession has so much more to worry about, such as being vigilant watchdogs for our community, being fair and balanced in our selection of stories, and making sure we are keeping up with technological advances in our industry that are changing faster than we can keep up.

I'm more interested in being relevant to readers, maintaining quality and discussing how we can prosper in the future than debating Page One ad placement.

Mark Platte is vice president/editor of The Honolulu Advertiser. Reach him at mplatte@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8080.