Southbound

Don’t expect The Saratogian to get any Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce or Downtown Business Association awards for promoting the Capita Region this winter. While the advertising departments of every other local paper in the area generally promote local business with their online ads, the corporate sellouts on Lake Avenue have taken a new, more out-of-state approach: send tourists to Arizona.

What’s that loud yelling coming from Clinton Street? Is that Joe Dalton’s voice?

Click around The Saratogian’s Web site for a couple seconds and the teal-colored pull-down movie ad is bound to pop up at the header of the page boasting about the Grand Canyon State as an attractive travel destination this winter.

Among other things, the ad even boasts the present temperature in Arizona –today around 81 degrees –which is bound to become a tempting lure as the Capital Region dips into the dawning months of 2007. And if that doesn’t hook you into a trip, then perhaps a subscription to the online Arizona guide newsletter will.

Fill out a quick questionnaire and you’ll receive a bevy of information about tailor-made special offers and package deals that will make spending cash in Arizona seem much more attractive once the polished sheen the Chamber and DBA apply each the holiday season dulls with the permafrost of January.

Perhaps it’s the Journal Register Company that’s putting the paper up to posting this ad. But one would think that a quick call to the corporate offices would point out this obvious blunder and maybe replace it with something that would at least direct prospective tourists to an area in the region, say the state-run ski mountains in North Creek and Lake Placid.

Then again this is The Saratogian. And given their tendencies, it’s almost surprising they don’t have an ad boasting the finer points of the Saratoga TU leading their Web page.