I can't speak to the general case here, but after reading Chuck's other comment, I think you may be mistaken about his website specifically:
> We don't even use an ad network a la google, we sell our own ads to local businesses and such.
> We don't even use an ad network a la google, we sell our own ads to local businesses and such.
If he does get on one of those lists it's quite easy to change the markup of the page (class names, etc) to stop the rules from matching. If you're doing the right thing by hosting your own ads you fully control the markup and layout and it becomes extremely easy to protect yourself from this.
But just in general, I don't believe I should have to spend my time cat-and-mousing ad detection. It's not sustainable, especially for a paper that only employs 2 developers, which is rare. Most papers don't have developers in house, they contract out this work, or if they're owned by a conglomerate like Gannett, their owner handles it. It also feels sketchy, circumventing ad detection sounds like something obnoxious malicious ad makers would do.
EDIT: having just tested it, Ublock Origin does block the ads on our website.