The Boston Globe Thursday ran its first-ever full-page wraparound ad, a plug for the University of Massachusetts that eclipsed the entire front page.

The paper will “gauge reader and advertiser reaction” before deciding whether to offer similar ads in the future, said Jane Bowman, vice president of marketing and sales development for the Globe.

“We continue to look for unique and creative ways to meet the needs of our clients and connect marketers with our readers who come to us for our Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism,” Bowman said. “This is certainly a new way for UMass to get their message in front of our readers.”

Media watcher and Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy, who posted the ad on his blog earlier, suggested obscuring the front page “moved the line past where we always thought it was.”

The ad seems to have taken some Globe readers by surprise, judging by the reaction on Twitter:

The @BostonGlobe front page is for sale?

John Cook is returning to Gawker Media as part of what the company’s editorial director, Joel Johnson, calls its “first executive-level, meta-level team.”

Gawker Media will “almost certainly” hire a small team of reporters and researchers to work under Cook, Johnson said, and the company’s eight editors-in-chief (at publications including Gizmodo, Jezebel, Jalopnik and Gawker) will be free to farm out investigations to it or assign writers into his group.

Cook.

Cook, who was editor of Gawker before he left to run The Intercept, will also have “a lot of freedom to report out stories as he sees fit,” Johnson said. He’ll report directly to Johnson, whose own hire, he said, was “the beginning of dipping the toe into the water of a more unified editorial group.”

Gawker Media plans to expand its art and graphics team under Jim Cooke, Johnson said, and it’s already moved that group into its own meta-department. Read more

Intercept Editor-in-Chief John Cook is leaving the publication and returning to Gawker Media to run investigations, an individual with knowledge of the hire tells Poynter. Cook was previously editor of Gawker. He announced he’d leave that publication for the First Look Media-owned property in March.

Update: Gawker Media confirms the hire and talks about what it means in terms of its plans for a more unified editorial approach.

Vanity Fair’s Sarah Ellison first reported Cook’s departure and new job.

Cook was one of the authors of an Intercept piece that examined why Matt Taibbi left First Look Media. The story laid the blame for his departure on a disconnect between “First Look executives, who by and large come from a highly structured Silicon Valley corporate environment, and the fiercely independent journalists who view corporate cultures and management-speak with disdain.” The Intercept, the story said, “was able to resolve most of these conflicts.” Read more

Good morning! Here are some career updates from the journalism community:

• Alan English is now publisher of The (Shreveport, Louisiana) Times. Previously, he was general manager there. (Gannett)
• James O’Byrne is now vice president of innovation for NOLA Media Group. Previously, he was director of state content there. Marcus Carmouche is now director of sports at NOLA Media Group. Previously, he was sports manager there. John Roach will be sports manager at NOLA Media Group. Previously, he was a sports managing producer there. Mark Lorando will direct state and metro content for NOLA.com. Previously, he was director of metro content there. (NOLA.com)
• Meredith Artley is now editor-in-chief of CNN Digital. Previously, she was managing editor of CNN.com. Andrew Morse is now general manager of CNN Digital. He is senior vice president of CNN U.S. Alex Wellen is now chief product officer at CNN Digital. Previously, he was vice president of business, products, and strategy there.

Good morning. Here are 10 media stories.

1. Why New York Times journalists can’t leave China

   The country's visa backlog puts people currently stationed there "in an unenviable professional position: Should they leave their posts, they can be pretty sure at this point that their editor won’t be able to replace them." (WP) | "At a news conference in Beijing alongside President Obama, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, appeared to draw a link between unfavorable coverage and access for reporters, saying that the visa problems of news organizations were of their own making." (NYT) | NYT editorial: "A confident regime that considers itself a world leader should be able to handle truthful examination and criticism." (NYT)

2. Washington Post appends multiple editor's notes to Zakaria columns

   David Folkenflik noticed they were up. (@davidfolkenflik). | Notes are on four of the six columns flagged by the mysterious media critics @blippoblappo and @crushingbort (1, 2, 3, 4).

Our adjunct faculty member Craig Silverman is in Lima, Peru, and he has tweeted some images from El Comercial. They’re pretty stunning.

A ceiling inside the offices of El Comercial in Lima. I'm in a tour so expect more. pic.twitter.com/KlglI7uiRQ

— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) November 11, 2014

I will bet that El Comercio's archive room is nicer than yr newspaper's. All the wood came from Nicaragua. #GDACAF14 pic.twitter.com/GmryiUPXDk

— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) November 11, 2014

Here are some more images Silverman took from the building, which the paper owns. Silverman says these are from near the newsroom.

What does your newsroom look like? Email or tweet me photos of the good, the bad and anything else you want to share and I’ll collect them in a post. On Halloween I wrote about a final get-together at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune before the newspaper moves on to newer digs. That story also contains a growing list of newspapers that have left their buildings. Read more

Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune Managing Editor Jane Hirt will leave “to pursue personal interests,” Robert Channick reports in the Tribune.

“I’m grateful to the Chicago Tribune for so many years of opportunities. Never a dull moment,” Hirt tweeted Wednesday.

Hirt began her career at the Tribune as an intern. She was named managing editor in 2008. She helped launch the paper’s free paper RedEye and guided the Tribune’s transition toward digital newsgathering and publishing. She plans to “take an extended break from the daily grind of journalism, with relaxing, travel, volunteer work and perhaps learning a new language on her relatively short to-do list,” Channick writes.

“Jane Hirt is an accomplished managing editor, newsroom mentor, and exceptional leader whose 25 years of contributions to Chicago Tribune are well documented,” a Chicago Tribune Media Group spokesperson told Poynter in an email. “While her departure leaves a void in our newsroom and, more importantly, our hearts, we support her decision to begin a new chapter in her life and wish her the very best.”

It’s been an honor and a privilege working alongside the courageous and dedicated journalists of the Chicago Tribune.

MPRNews

Students at Augsburg College in Minneapolis plan to protest an appearance by Stanley Hubbard. Hubbard is the chairman of Hubbard Broadcasting, whose KSTP accused Minneapolis’ mayor of “flashing a known gang sign.” The reaction to the story online has become known as #pointergate.

Hubbard is scheduled to speak at the college Thursday as part of the university’s Strommen Speaker Series.

Students organizations including the campus’ Minnesota Public Interest Research Group chapter, the Pan-Afrikan Student Union Student Union and Students for Racial Justice will hold a rally during Hubbard’s appearance in the hopes that it will prompt an apology from KSTP, said Ryan Kennedy, executive director of the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group.

“If he wanted an apology to be issued, it’s pretty clear that an apology would be issued,” Kennedy said. “So this is an attempt to tell KSTP and Hubbard Broadcasting that this isn’t going away.” Read more

Journalists who aren’t forced to work on Christmas and Thanksgiving are doubly blessed. In addition to a rare day off and a meal that’s not eaten in front of a keyboard, they have journalism awards season to look forward to.

From now until April, applications for some of America’s most prestigious journalism contests will remain open. So if have some time off and a fantastic story in your portfolio, you might consider putting your name forward for one of the following awards:

Berger Award
Deadline: March 9
Prize: $1,500
Description: “The prize, named after the late New York Times reporter Meyer “Mike” Berger, is awarded to a reporter for outstanding human-interest reporting.”

Cabot Prizes
Deadline: March 16
Prize: $5,000
Description: “The prizes recognize a distinguished body of work that has contributed to Inter-American understanding.”

The Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma
Deadline: Jan. Read more

Time

For the fourth year in a row, Time wants to know what word should be banned in the coming year, and they’ve narrowed it down to a list of 15, including bossy and feminist. Katy Steinmetz offers short blurbs after the poll “in which we’ve channeled the type of person who would like to see each nominee launched into the deepest, darkest, most hopeless eternity from whence there is no salvation nor return.” Here’s the one for feminist:

You have nothing against feminism itself, but when did it become a thing that every celebrity had to state their position on whether this word applies to them, like some politician declaring a party? Let’s stick to the issues and quit throwing this label around like ticker tape at a Susan B. Anthony parade.

Past words to win/lose include YOLO and twerk, Steinmetz reports. Full disclosure: I voted for kale. Read more

A new Pew Research Center survey on Internet privacy concerns, released today, has a nugget of good news for organizations producing targeted website content and advertising.

It would overstate the finding to say Americans don’t care whether information is collected about the media they like and their purchasing habits. About a third of those surveyed do. But those two were literally last on a list of 16 concerns Pew sampled.

My take is that the flurry of concern about blocking cookies, seemingly on the rise a couple of years ago, has been overtaken by more recent bigger-deal security breaches — specifically identity theft and government monitoring.

Lee Rainie, who directs the Pew’s Internet Project, said in a phone interview that interpretation is roughly right. “We didn’t ask people directly to compare one concern to another.  But it’s fair to say that over the last 18 months a host of things have come to the top of people’s agenda.  Read more