When the image of an Impala seemed to dash across a couple pages of the Inquirer recently, some of the news staff were not amused, and they loaded their typewriters for bear.

In their sights was Inky Publisher Joe Natoli, who I think deserved a tush full of buckshot. Natoli had OK'd a clever new trompe l'oeil advertising campaign for the General Motors car, where a stylized Impala appears to have burst out of the text of a legitimate news story, smearing type and ink as it races toward the edge of the newspaper.

Only the news story under the Impala isn't a real news story, but part of the advertisement itself. To make the ad more effective, GM had requested newspapers not to label the ad that ran across the bottom of a two-page spread as "advertising." Some newspapers, like USA Today, labeled the ad as an ad anyway. Some, including the Inky, didn't.

Was the ad confusing? You betcha. When I showed the spread to several City Paper staffers who are in the business of laying out newspapers, it took most some time before recognizing that the news story underneath the galloping Impala was, in fact, a phony.

At GM's request, Natoli had broken the paper's tradition of clearly labeling unclear advertising — ads that could be mistaken as genuine news copy. It was a dumb move that brought a powerful response. Four days later, in the Sunday Inquirer business section, editors ran a story which outed the ambiguous ad, with an unambiguous subhead that read, "Publishers, not happy with revenues, now willing to bend conceptual rules."

The story pulls no punches. Inquirer Editor Amanda Bennett is quoted saying that she would have wanted the ad to be labeled, because the paper has to protect its "credibility and integrity." Several media pundits who follow Bennett in the story are even more critical of Natoli's decision.

In effect, the news staff had hung the publisher out to dry. The following Wednesday, Aug. 31, the Impala ad appeared again but this time, the word "Advertisement" was printed at the top. The editor had apparently gotten her wish.

For his part, Natoli told me that he initially understood that GM would have pulled the ad if the paper had insisted on running the "Advertising" slug. He added that he, too, would have preferred the ad with the disclaimer. And when he found out that GM hadn't insisted on running the ad as is, that other papers had slugged the ad, the Inky followed suit.

Which left me wondering what Natoli would have done if GM had continued insisting on running the ad without a disclaimer. He answered that he wasn't sure. After all, he said, advertisers are looking for branding opportunities and product placement in other kinds of media, so newspapers will have to adapt.

That's nuts. Instead of breaching the wall between news and advertising, newspapers ought to be reinforcing the distinction. Natoli crossed that line to appease advertisers, and this time his news staff pushed back. There shouldn't be a next time, because credibility once lost is generally gone forever.

How come there's not a single event in the Fringe Festival being beamed into cyberspace?

According to the festival program, none of the performances are being broadcast live or being recorded for future viewing, either over the net or via cable. Festival organizers say there will be a couple of video cameras in attendance, but only to record performances for archival purposes — just for a bare record of what went on.

Someone please explain this to me. Why are festival performance producers apparently so cyber-shy?

Part of the reason could be a matter of aesthetics. Perhaps some executive producers want audiences to experience Live Arts performances, well, totally live.

Still, this is Philadelphia, home of cable giant Comcast and potential site of the nation's first major municipal WiFi system. A slot on Comcast's national network could give performers a shot at reaching some 20 percent of all the television sets in America. Or they could reach every cable TV set in Philadelphia through the city's own underused channels.

So, I checked with some folks in City Hall, and they're very receptive to running video of the Fringe on their channel. Apparently, though, no one has ever asked them.

I also checked with Nick Stuccio, the Fringe's producer, to see if he's ever approached the city or Comcast for airtime or technical assistance. After all, Suzanne Roberts — whose family controls Comcast and a cable personality in her own right — is a five-figure contributor to the Fringe. Why not take the next step, I asked Stuccio, and bring the festival to a whole new audience, potentially to a national one?

What a great idea, said Stuccio, admitting that he's never asked. Now he says he's going to start inquiring.

Maybe all it'd take to give the Fringe a national stage is simply to ask. At the very least asking would be a helpful first step.