Arthur Rosenthal, 93, Dies; Published Academic Books

Arthur J. Rosenthal, a publisher of intellectual masterworks in an era of fast-buck publishing who led Basic Books in the 1950s and ’60s and created a model for universities nationwide by leading Harvard University Press to solvency in the ’70s and ’80s, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.

Arthur J. Rosenthal in 1990, the year that he became the publisher of Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

His death was confirmed by his son Jim.

Mr. Rosenthal, who founded Basic Books in 1952, let his taste in nonfiction and his quasi indifference to profit margins guide him as a publisher. But it was an early connection to the society of psychoanalysts (his mother ran a salon for psychoanalytic debate in their Manhattan home when he was growing up) that led Mr. Rosenthal to his first publishing deal, the three-volume official biography of Dr. Sigmund Freud by a disciple, Dr. Ernest Jones.

Dr. Jones’s biography, “The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud,” became one of the basic texts of Freud scholarship. Dr. Jones “only expected sales of about 600 copies to other psychoanalysts,” Mr. Rosenthal told The New York Times in 1985. “We had world rights and no contract, just a handshake.” The book became a mainstay of Basic Books.

Mr. Rosenthal’s interests in psychology, sociology, current affairs, history and philosophy led him to publish a library full of important social science volumes over the next decades, including early works by the behavioral scientists Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson.

In 1972, after selling Basic Books to Harper & Row for a reported $4 million, Mr. Rosenthal took his talents to the nonprofit Harvard Press, which had been faltering. There, his ability to bring what he called “borderline academic books” to a wider audience helped put the press in the black and served as a model for university presses elsewhere. He introduced new lists in science and technology, professionalized marketing and began picking winners.

Among the titles published during Mr. Rosenthal’s tenure were Bernard Bailyn’s 1975 National Book Award winner, “The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson”; E. O. Wilson’s “On Human Nature” (1978), which received the Pulitzer Prize; Alfred D. Chandler Jr.’s “Visible Hand,” which received both the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes in 1978; Carol Gilligan’s “In a Different Voice” (1982), which sold over 500,000 copies and became a major text of the women’s movement; Thomas K. McCraw’s Pulitzer-winning “Prophets of Regulation” (1984); Jane Goodall’s “Chimpanzees of Gombe” (1986), an account of Dr. Goodall’s first 25 years working with chimps; and Eudora Welty’s “One Writer’s Beginnings” (1984), which spent 46 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list.

“When a press like ours can publish a roaring best seller,” Mr. Rosenthal said in 1986, “it helps all university presses, and it increases the bookstores’ recognition that we are not only handing out dead mackerel.“

He said he was proud to publish any book â€" whether profitable or not â€" that managed “to push our culture one grain of sand forward.”

John Leonard, a Nation columnist and former editor of The New York Times Book Review, described Mr. Rosenthal as an endangered species in a 1997 commentary about the corporatization of the publishing industry for the CBS News program “Sunday Morning”: “He prided himself on being able to publish any book he cared about.”

In the publishing world, Mr. Leonard added, “We used to be able to count on the Arthur Rosenthals.”

Arthur Jesse Rosenthal was born in Manhattan on Sept. 26, 1919, to Arthur and Grace Rosenthal. His father was a stockbroker and a member of the New York Stock Exchange. His mother, who was a patient in the 1920s of Dr. Otto Rank, an Austrian psychoanalyst who was one of Freud’s first pupils, pursued a lifelong interest in psychology.

After graduating from Yale in 1941, Mr. Rosenthal served four years in the Army as the chief of publications for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, directing press and propaganda work in the Philippines and occupied Japan.

Before starting Basic Books, Mr. Rosenthal was a special assistant to James G. MacDonald, the first United States ambassador to Israel.

Besides his son Jim, Mr. Rosenthal’s survivors include a daughter, Kathryn Goldman; a son, Paul; and eight grandchildren. Mr. Rosenthal’s two marriages ended in divorce.

Mr. Rosenthal, who retired from Harvard Press in 1990, was 70 when he started his last job, as publisher of Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

In an interview at the time, Mr. Rosenthal acknowledged that the business was becoming more difficult. But his enthusiasm was a constant.

“Something happens,” he said. “You get an idea. You meet an author. You can’t be depressed and be a good publisher.”

A version of this article appeared in print on July 9, 2013, on page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: Arthur Rosenthal, 93, Dies; Published Academic Books.

Chief Leaves Barnes & Noble After Losses on E-Readers

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

William Lynch, Barnes & Noble's chief executive, in 2012.

 

William Lynch Jr., the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, resigned on Monday, two weeks after a devastating earnings report that accentuated the bookseller’s losing battle against powerful rivals like Amazon.

Mr. Lynch’s departure was part of a series of sweeping changes the company announced as it tries to regain its footing after a failed initiative to build up its Nook division and compete in the increasingly crowded market for e-readers. When it revealed its fourth-quarter earnings late last month, Barnes & Noble said it would cease making its own color tablets, an acknowledgment that they were lagging popular brands like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Apple’s iPad.

Instead, the company said it would form partnerships with third parties to make the color devices, while it continued to make and sell its own black-and-white versions of the Nook.

In a statement late Monday, the company said that Michael P. Huseby had been appointed chief executive of the Nook division and president of Barnes & Noble. Mr. Huseby has served as chief financial officer since joining Barnes & Noble in March 2012. Max J. Roberts, the chief executive of the college division, will report to Mr. Huseby, while Mr. Huseby and Mitchell S. Klipper, the chief executive for the retail stores, will report to Leonard Riggio, the company’s chairman.

The moves Monday appeared to be a step toward separating the digital and retail divisions, as the company has indicated it might do. Barnes & Noble has been in talks over a potential sale of its digital assets, as well as its 675 bookstores.

Microsoft is one potential buyer of the Nook business; last year it invested hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire 17.6 percent of the division.

Mr. Riggio has expressed interest in taking back ownership of the physical stores that make Barnes & Noble the largest bookstore chain in the country. Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble, declined to provide an update on that offer.

There was no indication that a new chief executive would be named.

“Because the company is in a transition period, we have no immediate plans to name a C.E.O.,” Ms. Keating said.  

 “We thank William Lynch for helping transform Barnes & Noble into a leading digital content provider and for leading in the development of our award-winning line of Nook products,” Mr. Riggio said in a statement issued on Monday. “As the bookselling industry continues to undergo significant transformation, we believe that Michael, Mitchell and Max are the right executives to lead us into the future.”

The financial results for the fiscal fourth quarter underscored the urgency of the need to take action. The Nook unit lost $177 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, more than doubling the loss from the period a year earlier. Sales fell 34 percent, to $108 million.

The signs have been ominous for the company since the beginning of the year, when it announced that sales for the nine-week holiday period in late 2012 had declined at both its bookstores and in the Nook unit.

Mr. Lynch joined Barnes & Noble in February 2009, with no previous experience in bookselling. He was executive vice president for marketing at HSN.com and also worked for Gifts.com.

At the time, his arrival hailed as a forward-thinking move, since Mr. Lynch, a Texas native, was only 39 years old and fluent in e-commerce and technology. Within months, Barnes & Noble introduced its first Nook e-reader.

To publishers, Mr. Lynch had performed a temporary miracle, helping create a product that provided a welcome competitor to Amazon’s Kindle, which dominated the market and offered e-books at a relatively inexpensive price.

The Nook was initially successful, drawing critical praise and capturing consumers who were uneasy about buying an e-reader â€" at the time a brand-new device â€" online, without testing it out in person. Barnes & Noble’s hundreds of retail stores allowed potential customers to see and touch what they were buying.

But even though Barnes & Noble quickly gained a sizable piece of the e-book market, it was not enough to ward off Amazon. And as black-and-white e-readers gave way to multifunctional color tablets, Barnes & Noble found itself competing unsuccessfully against companies many times its size, like Amazon and Apple, that have had technology in their DNA from the start.

As chief executive, Mr. Lynch worked from the company’s Ninth Avenue office in Manhattan, across town from the Fifth Avenue building where Mr. Riggio keeps his office. Mr. Lynch threw his energies into the digital side of the business, taking far less of an interest in the retail stores, and frequently flew to Palo Alto to build up Barnes & Noble’s Silicon Valley presence, where their e-readers are designed.

Mike Shatzkin, the founder and chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, a publishing consultant, said a split of the business could help stave off the company’s decline.

“The Nook business clearly is going to need some global investment to have any kind of chance at all, and it certainly looks possible that they will be better off separate than together,” Mr. Shatzkin said. “There’s a glide path to oblivion, and you can affect the speed of the decline. Nobody’s going to bring back a robust brick-and-mortar book business.”

Chinese Journalist Is Released on Bail

BEIJING â€" A Chinese journalist and documentary filmmaker whose work has been harshly critical of life in China was released on bail Monday after spending five weeks in a Beijing jail.

The journalist, Du Bin, said in an interview hours after his release that he could still face trial for “picking quarrels and making trouble,” accusations he said stemmed from his recent film about a Chinese labor camp and a book about the crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters. The charges against him carry a maximum five-year prison term.

Over the coming year, he said, the authorities could still try him on those charges, adding that his movements would be largely restricted during that period. “It all depends on whether the police are unhappy with me,” he said, speaking from the home of his girlfriend.

His lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, said the terms of Mr. Du’s release on bail were not entirely clear, which he said was most likely intentional, perhaps as a way to constrain his behavior.

Mr. Du, 41, who has worked as a freelance photographer for The New York Times, has published a number of books outside mainland China in recent years that have been pointedly critical of the Chinese Communist Party. They include a history of the famine caused by Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, and another that included graphic accounts of the torture endured by members of Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement.

It was his most recent two works that drew the most attention of the authorities: an hourlong documentary about conditions at the notorious Masanjia “re-education through labor” camp in northeast China and a book that compiled firsthand accounts describing the military’s violent suppression of the 1989 pro-democracy protests. The book, “Tiananmen Massacre,” was published in late May by Mirror Books, which has offices in New York and Hong Kong.

Mr. Du said the police seemed particularly interested in how much money he had received from the book, perhaps because they sought to charge him with economic crimes. “They were disappointed when I told them I hadn’t made a cent,” he said.

Mr. Du said his 37 days in detention were unpleasant - especially during his initial 20 hours of interrogation â€" but that his jailers did not mistreat him. He said he shared a cell with nearly two dozen other inmates, most of them arrested over petty crimes. Over the five weeks of detention, he said, he lost a considerable amount of weight.

Despite the uncertainty of whether he would be formally arrested and tried, Mr. Du said he felt at ease during most of his time at the Fengtai District detention center. “I was relaxed because I knew I hadn’t committed any crime,” he said. “I did what everyone should be doing, which is to tell the truth.”

He said he was surprised that the police did not warn him before setting him free against talking to the media about his experience, an admonishment often given to political dissidents upon their release. “This,” he said, “is progress for China.”

Patrick Zuo contributed research.

Advertising: Campaign Redefines Running as a Social Activity

Campaign Redefines Running as a Social Activity

Print ads from the New Balance “Runnovation” campaign show an early morning group workout, left, and women on a night run.

ONCE perceived as largely a solitary pursuit, running today is a more social endeavor, as runners train with friends for shorter races like five-kilometer charity runs. And rather than a single-minded pursuit, running increasingly is just one aspect of participation in a Tough Mudder obstacle course competition, triathlon or boot camp-style fitness class.

Now, New Balance hopes to capture this newer ethos of running with a campaign it calls “Runnovation” that promotes running as more of a social activity and part of a training regimen.

“Redefine girls’ night out,” says the headline of one print ad that shows a group of women running in Boston at night. “Thursday night. 9:15 p.m.,” the copy continues. “Some go out. Others go out and make excellent happen. The night is yours. This is Runnovation.”

Online videos and print ads also highlight the November Project, a free, all-weather, running-based exercise group that works out three times a week in the Boston area.

“Hit the wall. On purpose,” says the headline of an ad showing a group in running gear jumping onto a low stone wall. “Somerville, MA. 6:48 a.m.,” the copy continues. “Run there. Sprint stairs. Jump up on walls. Push-ups. Situps. Run home. Take shower. Get to work. This is Monday. This is November Project. This is Runnovation.”

The campaign, which includes online-only videos and digital advertising, is by Arnold Worldwide, Boston, part of the Havas Creative unit of Havas. It will be introduced Tuesday with advertising in about eight magazines, including Runner’s World, Men’s Health, Women’s Health and Outside.

New Balance, which declined to reveal the expenditure for the campaign, spent $14.4 million on advertising in 2012, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.

Hilary Keates, the director of global marketing and brand management at New Balance, said that the brand had moved away from showing runners alone in advertising in recent years.

“We’ve definitely made a shift in showing more people in advertising,” Ms. Keates said. “It’s less about being alone on a road and more about that community that you get out in the running world.”

Luke Perkins, a creative director at Arnold, said that showing groups of runners was more arresting.

“The solo runner is less impactful,” Mr. Perkins said. “But visually a pack of runners running or training or working out is a beautiful thing.”

Ms. Keates said the object of the new campaign was “to really document those changes of running being more social and participatory, and to show how we as a brand are really pushing the envelope in terms of that evolution in running.”

Bojan Mandaric and Brogan Graham, friends who began the November Project in 2011, promote it through social media like Facebook and Twitter. New Balance, which is based in Boston, does not sponsor the November Project, which it features in a short online documentary that is part of the campaign, but was intimately familiar with it because employees of the brand and its agency, Arnold, have participated in the workouts.

“We didn’t have to look beyond our backyard on how best to articulate this social component, because the November Project is a wonderful articulation of this real sense of community and togetherness,” Ms. Keates said.

The new campaign also highlights running in unusual settings, featuring Anton Krupicka, a runner sponsored by New Balance who competes in 50-mile and 100-mile ultramarathon trail runs. Finally, the New Balance campaign highlights the brand’s design facility to show how it designs shoes for evermore complicated running challenges â€" like those encountered by Mr. Krupicka.

Running is increasing its popularity, with 50.1 million Americans running at least once in 2011, up from 42.5 million in 2009, an increase of 17.8 percent, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

The number of marathon finishers increased to a high of 518,000 in 2011, compared with 353,000 in 2000, an increase of 46.7 percent, according to Running USA, a nonprofit group. (Marathon finishers decreased to 487,000 in 2012, but Running USA attributes that to the cancellation of the IMG New York City Marathon after Hurricane Sandy, rather than waning interest.)

Running shoe revenues rose about 7 percent in the first six months of 2013 over the same period last year, with New Balance gaining about 3 percent over the period, according to SportsOneSource, a market research company that focuses on sporting goods and footwear.

One indicator that runners are gravitating to groups may be the diminished interest in running alone in home gyms. In the home market for large cardio equipment like treadmills, revenue declined 30 percent in 2011 and 25 percent in 2012, according to SportsOneSource.

Matt Powell, an analyst at SportsOneSource, said the new campaign by New Balance was reminiscent of the “Run Happy” campaign introduced by Brooks, the running brand, in 2010.

“Brooks has really been pushing this idea for a few years of just getting out there and having fun and not worrying about having everything perfect,” he said.

The effort by Brooks to focus on the social and lighthearted aspects of running has included sponsoring Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon races throughout the country featuring rock bands along the courses.

Advertising: Campaign Redefines Running as a Social Activity

Campaign Redefines Running as a Social Activity

Print ads from the New Balance “Runnovation” campaign show an early morning group workout, left, and women on a night run.

ONCE perceived as largely a solitary pursuit, running today is a more social endeavor, as runners train with friends for shorter races like five-kilometer charity runs. And rather than a single-minded pursuit, running increasingly is just one aspect of participation in a Tough Mudder obstacle course competition, triathlon or boot camp-style fitness class.

Now, New Balance hopes to capture this newer ethos of running with a campaign it calls “Runnovation” that promotes running as more of a social activity and part of a training regimen.

“Redefine girls’ night out,” says the headline of one print ad that shows a group of women running in Boston at night. “Thursday night. 9:15 p.m.,” the copy continues. “Some go out. Others go out and make excellent happen. The night is yours. This is Runnovation.”

Online videos and print ads also highlight the November Project, a free, all-weather, running-based exercise group that works out three times a week in the Boston area.

“Hit the wall. On purpose,” says the headline of an ad showing a group in running gear jumping onto a low stone wall. “Somerville, MA. 6:48 a.m.,” the copy continues. “Run there. Sprint stairs. Jump up on walls. Push-ups. Situps. Run home. Take shower. Get to work. This is Monday. This is November Project. This is Runnovation.”

The campaign, which includes online-only videos and digital advertising, is by Arnold Worldwide, Boston, part of the Havas Creative unit of Havas. It will be introduced Tuesday with advertising in about eight magazines, including Runner’s World, Men’s Health, Women’s Health and Outside.

New Balance, which declined to reveal the expenditure for the campaign, spent $14.4 million on advertising in 2012, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.

Hilary Keates, the director of global marketing and brand management at New Balance, said that the brand had moved away from showing runners alone in advertising in recent years.

“We’ve definitely made a shift in showing more people in advertising,” Ms. Keates said. “It’s less about being alone on a road and more about that community that you get out in the running world.”

Luke Perkins, a creative director at Arnold, said that showing groups of runners was more arresting.

“The solo runner is less impactful,” Mr. Perkins said. “But visually a pack of runners running or training or working out is a beautiful thing.”

Ms. Keates said the object of the new campaign was “to really document those changes of running being more social and participatory, and to show how we as a brand are really pushing the envelope in terms of that evolution in running.”

Bojan Mandaric and Brogan Graham, friends who began the November Project in 2011, promote it through social media like Facebook and Twitter. New Balance, which is based in Boston, does not sponsor the November Project, which it features in a short online documentary that is part of the campaign, but was intimately familiar with it because employees of the brand and its agency, Arnold, have participated in the workouts.

“We didn’t have to look beyond our backyard on how best to articulate this social component, because the November Project is a wonderful articulation of this real sense of community and togetherness,” Ms. Keates said.

The new campaign also highlights running in unusual settings, featuring Anton Krupicka, a runner sponsored by New Balance who competes in 50-mile and 100-mile ultramarathon trail runs. Finally, the New Balance campaign highlights the brand’s design facility to show how it designs shoes for evermore complicated running challenges â€" like those encountered by Mr. Krupicka.

Running is increasing its popularity, with 50.1 million Americans running at least once in 2011, up from 42.5 million in 2009, an increase of 17.8 percent, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

The number of marathon finishers increased to a high of 518,000 in 2011, compared with 353,000 in 2000, an increase of 46.7 percent, according to Running USA, a nonprofit group. (Marathon finishers decreased to 487,000 in 2012, but Running USA attributes that to the cancellation of the IMG New York City Marathon after Hurricane Sandy, rather than waning interest.)

Running shoe revenues rose about 7 percent in the first six months of 2013 over the same period last year, with New Balance gaining about 3 percent over the period, according to SportsOneSource, a market research company that focuses on sporting goods and footwear.

One indicator that runners are gravitating to groups may be the diminished interest in running alone in home gyms. In the home market for large cardio equipment like treadmills, revenue declined 30 percent in 2011 and 25 percent in 2012, according to SportsOneSource.

Matt Powell, an analyst at SportsOneSource, said the new campaign by New Balance was reminiscent of the “Run Happy” campaign introduced by Brooks, the running brand, in 2010.

“Brooks has really been pushing this idea for a few years of just getting out there and having fun and not worrying about having everything perfect,” he said.

The effort by Brooks to focus on the social and lighthearted aspects of running has included sponsoring Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon races throughout the country featuring rock bands along the courses.

Reality Show Contestants Pay a Real-World Price

On ‘Big Brother,’ Racial and Gay Slurs Abound

Lisette M. Azar/CBS

Candace Stewart, left, on “Big Brother” with GinaMarie Zimmerman, whose racial comments have cost her her real-world job.

In the summer of 2000, when CBS first locked people in a fishbowl of a house and televised almost every second of their lives, there was a spate of bad press when a newspaper discovered that a participant had ties to the New Black Panther Party. The network quickly issued a statement that said it “will not tolerate nor permit any hate speech on the program,” called “Big Brother.”

Aaryn Gries has lost a modeling contract because of her use of racial and gay slurs.

Since then, reality has intruded. This summer, in the show’s 15th iteration, several participants have been overheard making racist, sexist and homophobic comments about others in the house, and in the process they have reignited the oldest debate in reality television: whether the show’s producers are appropriately and fairly depicting real life in their quest to provoke and entertain viewers.

The slurs were shown on the Internet (where paying subscribers watch live feeds from the house around the clock â€" “See what we can’t show you on TV,” the CBS Web site says) but were not immediately on the television version of the show, whose producers distill the action into three hourly episodes each week. This troubled some loyal followers of “Big Brother,” because television viewers were seeing an incomplete picture of the participants. On a show with a $500,000 grand prize, perceptions and reputations are important.

“Why not show these people for who they actually are?” wrote the RealityBlurred.com blogger Andy Dehnart, who has cataloged what he called a torrent of offensive comments since the Season 15 premiere on June 26. “After all,” Mr. Dehnart wrote, “producers and network executives all approved them and decided to give them 90 days of attention while using them to earn money.”

Among the remarks: GinaMarie Zimmerman, who is white, was heard insulting African-Americans and equating them to “tokens.” When she referred to an African-American housemate as dark, another white contestant, Aaryn Gries, responded, “Be careful what you say in the dark; might not be able to see that bitch.” About an Asian-American participant, Ms. Gries was heard saying: “Dude, shut up. Go make some rice!” Ms. Gries was also heard criticizing an openly gay contestant, using an epithet to argue that no one would vote for the participant. Another contestant, Spencer Clawson, has uttered words, unpublishable here, targeting gays and women.

As the controversy bubbled up, CBS emphatically said that it did not condone the prejudicial comments. It said the same thing in 2011, the last time there was outrage about hateful words on the show’s Internet stream. But to some viewers, this time felt different.

“I’ve watched all but two seasons of ‘Big Brother’ and have never seen players so vocal and unapologetic about their bigotry,” said Ragan Fox, an associate professor of communication studies at California State University, Long Beach, who is gay and was a contestant in 2010.

On June 30 he wrote an open letter to the producers urging them not to sanitize the television version of the show. “What’s the point,” he asked, “in casting gay, Asian-American and African-American characters if producers are going to edit out the racism and homophobia these contestants deal with while playing the game?”

Last Wednesday’s “Big Brother” came and went without any mention of the controversy. On Sunday, though, the show addressed some of it head-on, in a way that is unusual on broadcast television.

“It was ultimately part of the story in the house,” said Allison Grodner, an executive producer of “Big Brother” since its inception, who has defended the show’s choice to cut out isolated offensive comments in past seasons.

In this case Ms. Gries became the household’s temporary leader, causing several contestants to talk about how they disapproved of her abusive language. “That gave us a launching pad to be able to tell this story,” Ms. Grodner said. Several of the offensive clips were broadcast.

“I do feel it would be irresponsible to put hate on the airwaves just for hate’s sake,” she added. “You need to have some sort of context.”

In a statement on Monday afternoon, CBS said: “We are very mindful of the important issues that have been raised by these recent comments. With regard to the broadcast version, we are weighing carefully issues of broadcast standards, an obligation to inform the audience of important elements that influence the competition, and sensitivity to how any inappropriate comments are presented.”

Sunday’s show omitted some of the misogynistic and homophobic language used by others in the house, like Mr. Clawson, but it could come up in future episodes if it becomes part of the season narrative. (The show will end its season on Sept. 18.)

“I hope this establishes a precedent for future seasons,” Mr. Fox said in an e-mail after the episode. “When production turns a blind eye to racism, sexism and homophobia, they become complicit in the very forms of hate speech they actively deny.”

Rebutting some of the online fury of the past few days, Ms. Grodner said the show’s producers do not actively “look for people who might say things like this.” She suggested that “Big Brother” was simply mirroring real life, as ugly as it sometimes is.

“Your neighbor is probably using racial slurs behind closed doors, no offense to your neighbor,” she said, pausing before adding, “There’s a very important discussion here that people will hopefully have as a result of all this.”

In the meantime, the controversy has proved costly to Ms. Gries and Ms. Zimmerman. The modeling agency that represented Ms. Gries has dropped her contract â€" unbeknown to her, of course, since the people in the house don’t hear from the outside world â€" and she has been nicknamed “Klan Barbie” by some followers of the show.

Ms. Zimmerman has lost her job as a pageant coordinator. “We are actually thankful that this show let us see GinaMarie for who she truly is,” her employer said in a statement, “as we would never want her to be a role model to our future contestants.”

A version of this article appeared in print on July 9, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Reality Show Contestants Pay a Real-World Price .

Campaign Spotlight: Lodging Chain Offers ‘Room’ With a View

Lodging Chain Offers ‘Room’ With a View

A leader in the lodging category is introducing a campaign meant to portray its properties as more distinctive than those of a typical chain yet at the same time offering the kinds of amenities and services that customers expect from chains.

An ad from the new Loews Hotels & Resorts campaign.

The company is Loews Hotels and Resorts, part of the Loews Corporation, which is bringing out a campaign in print, digital and social media with a budget estimated at $4 million. The campaign carries the theme “The room you need.”

The double meaning of the theme expresses a central premise of the campaign: Loews offers “room,” in the sense of a place to rest your head at night, and room, in the sense of a respite from the kind of attention from the staff that some travelers perceive as overdone and old-fashioned.

The campaign is coming out at a time of year when consumers are flooded with ads for hotels, motels, resorts and inns. The timing reflects that, with so many consumers traveling each summer, lodging marketers seek to fish where the fish are â€" or where the fish are going to stay overnight.

Others that have introduced campaigns recently include the Holiday Inn Express division of the InterContinental Hotel Group, which brought back its “Stay smart” ads known for the punch line “But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night," and the Marriott Hotels and Resorts division of Marriott International with ads that carry the theme “Travel brilliantly.”

The creative part of the Loews Hotels and Resorts campaign is being handled by an agency named Catch New York. The digital part is being handled by TravelClick in New York. The social media aspects, including a presence on Facebook and Twitter, are being handled internally at Loews with assistance from TravelClick.

The campaign is the first for Loews Hotels and Resorts in more than three years, says Bruce Himelstein, chief marketing officer of the company, which is based in New York. The most recent previous ads carried the theme “Savor the journey.”

The new campaign is also the first since Mr. Himelstein joined Loews “a little over a year ago,” he adds, after serving in senior posts for companies in the hospitality and travel fields that included Oceania Cruises, Kerzner International and Ritz-Carlton.

Loews has 19 properties now open, with two hotels under construction, in Chicago and Orlando, Fla., and “more in the pipeline,” Mr. Himelstein says.

In conducting research among consumers about the company’s place in the market, “we found that they knew we weren’t an independent, a one-off,” he adds, “and they knew we weren’t a big chain.”

“It’s a pretty special positioning,” he adds. “We fall into a sweet spot in the middle.”

Consumers perceive Loews “as a ‘safe breakout,' ” Mr. Himelstein says: an alternative to both “the one-off hip hotels where maybe the D.J. is playing at a volume of 10 or 15 as you check in,” he adds, and the “big beige boxes” of the largest chains.

So the campaign seeks to portray staying at a Loews hotel or resort as “a unique experience,” Mr. Himelstein says, backed up by “this wonderful family legacy of hospitality called Loews.”

The goal is to “build to a point where we’re breaking through the clutter,” he adds. “It’s an exciting time to have this brand front and center.”

The initial print ads in the campaign show attractive men and women enjoying themselves at actual Loews properties. Their age range reflects a desire to reach “a slightly younger demographic” of 35 and up, Mr. Himelstein says.

In one ad, a woman wearing a knockout red dress is in her room, adjusting a strap on her shoe. “Before the red eye home, the red dress on the town,” the headline reads.

In a second ad, a man is jumping into a pool as a woman tries to avoid getting splashed. The headline reads: “Acting your age. Is truly overrated.”

In a third ad, a father and son are running with a kite on a path leading to or from a beach. The headline reads: “The annual meeting. Meets the daily escape.”

In a fourth ad, three stylish women are having sushi and cosmopolitans. “Hours to get ready,” the headline says. “Seconds to be noticed.”

Catch New York was selected by Loews in November after a review that, according to Mr. Himelstein, began with a lengthy list of agencies and was winnowed from “18 to 10 to 6 to 3” to, finally, the winner, which replaced Agency 212 in New York.

“We chose Catch because they’re scrappy, they’re young and they’re really creative,” Mr. Himelstein says.

Douglas Spitzer, partner and chief creative officer at Catch New York, recalls how keenly interested he and the other executives at the agency were in landing the Loews account.

“It’s a well-supported brand,” Mr. Spitzer says, and “an aggressive, hungry-to-grow brand.”