Last weekend Mark Matassa, a former reporter for the Seattle Times and home delivery subscriber of the newspaper for more than 25 years, cancelled his subscription after a full-page political ad, paid for by the Times’ parent company Seattle Times Co., appeared supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna.

Matassa, whose Facebook post detailing his frustration with the Times was scooped by Jim Romenesko’s blog, suggests the Times compromised its journalistic objectivity when it ran an ad favoring a political candidate.

I just canceled my Seattle Times subscription in protest of the political-endorsement house ads. This came after a failed attempt yesterday: five minutes of voice jail, followed by a recording telling me the customer service desk closed at noon. It was 12:01.

Today, the customer service lady tried to talk me out of canceling, reading from a script about how the business decision does not reflect on the newsroom or its coverage, that I could still count on fair and unbiased reporting, blah blah blah. I understand all that, I said, adding that I worked at the paper for 12 years and have been a loyal subscriber for 25 years and a journalist for more than 30. And that I was certain I wanted to vote with my feet and my wallet and cancel the paper.

You know, she said, a great way to register your complaint — and a lot of subscribers are doing this — is to suspend your subscription during the campaign season and then restart it after the election. No, I said, I want to cancel.

OK, then, when would you like to stop delivery? ASAP. OK, that will be tomorrow, the 22nd. Fine, I said. And what date would you like to resume delivery?

Unbelievable.

Even though Matassa’s loudest criticism sounds more like it’s directed at customer service than the Times’ journalistic objectivity, his sense of disappointment mirrors that of many other Times readers, such as Dr. Hanna Ergstrom:

“As a longtime Seattle Times reader, I find myself sadly dismayed … This is not an issue of whom is being supported, it is that they are being supported. I would be equally upset if you were running ads for the opposing candidate. As a citizen, I rely on newspapers for information regarding the world we live in. How am I supposed to believe that the Times is unbiased … ?”

The controversial ad supporting Rob McKenna

Dozens of dismayed readers also wrote to the newspaper, with many posting on Facebook and Twitter that they too were canceling their subscriptions.

Could it be that many readers are overreacting? After all, haven’t newspapers been engines for political machines for hundreds of years, and aren’t we — readers who want to see print papers survive in a digital world — expected to understand that blurring the line between revenue and objectivity is but an unfortunate byproduct of this moment in the industry’s lifespan?

No, absolutely not, insists Times executive editor David Boardman in a column titled “A Vow to Continue Impartial Reporting”:

Executives on the business side of our company conceived the ad plan, describing it as a pilot project to demonstrate the power of newspaper political advertising and to attract new revenue at a time when all newspapers are financially challenged. They said they chose these two campaigns to be consistent with endorsements already made by the editorial-page staff, which, like the news staff, is entirely separate from the business side.

Boardman stressed that the Times’ editorial-page staff, which, as is the norm for newspapers, already expressed its political endorsements, is not one-in-the-same as the paper’s business-side staff, and that the ad paid for by the parent company came as a surprise:

… no one in the newsroom, including me, had any involvement in this project. I was given a heads-up after the plan was set, an opportunity to express concerns but not to change the course. And I can assure you that when our reporters, editors, photographers, artists and producers opened their papers Wednesday morning and read at the bottom of a full-page pro-McKenna ad, “Paid for by The Seattle Times Company,” they were as surprised as any of you.

So we have here what amounts to a reasonable excuse for what’s obviously become a big mistake by the Times.

But is it enough to satisfy readers — will Boardman and his colleagues emerge as the independent reporters they claim to be, or has the Seattle Times Co., in an effort to increase revenue, undermined the paper’s very essence?

For Matassa, at least, it appears the die is cast:

… My decision has nothing to do with the objectivity of the newsroom, or even the fact that it was a McKenna ad. I’d have felt the same no matter which candidate or cause they were backing. I just believe it’s a fundamental break with journalistic ethics. I’m done, and not returning.