BoSacks Speaks Out: BoSacks Speaks Out: Who Should We Put On The Cover?

BoSacks Speaks Out: BoSacks Speaks Out: Who Should We Put On The Cover?

I was cruising the web tonight, as is my habit and at Rex Hammock's Blog, he pointed me to the article below and noted the following quote:

"I look forward to the day when magazines can return to serving their audience and not the newsstand. Until then you're stuck with 109, free, biggest, hot, ultimate, travel, toys, secrets, great, perfect, best, sex, abs, weight-loss, getaway, new, insider, easy, delicious, shortcuts, paired with a celebrity you keep seeing over and over on the covers of magazines."

Those are true and in a way very scary words. We have homogenized and dumbed down our covers, with elating numbers, ridiculous claims and a plethora of nonsense freebies. Where is the focus on excellent content? Where is the compelling editorial that excites the reader after the newsstand purchase gets home?

I was just at a publishing convention a day ago, that had as usual an assortment of magazines on display. Not one, not two, but at least three were touting that we all could have flat abs in ten minutes. Hmmm. Would that, that could be true? It ain't.

I'm sure that it is successful and sells magazines to the twenty something crowd of ab busters each and every month. The publishers wouldn't do it if it wasn't successful. Or at least, I would like to think they wouldn't. Who the heck knows, it's brutal out there on the newsstand these days.

I guess what I'm getting at is that this process which might help sell newsstand titles seems to somehow cheapen the overall product. Maybe that's it. If we don't respect ourselves how can we expect others to do so?
For me it's late at night on a poker night and perhaps I'm off target. What do you think?



Who Should We Put On The Cover?
Photography Director Rob Haggart
http://aphotoeditor.com/2008/06/24/who-should-we-put-on-the-cover/

In my career I've gone from "let's see which of the stories we have this month will make a good cover" to "we're going to call every single A list celebrity that has a movie this month till someone says yes" and then of course, task some writer with throwing a story together in a week or less. The cover of the magazine was the single source of more anxiety, stress and nightmares than anything else I've ever worked on. There was always a deadline looming and unreturned phone calls to publicists, a photographer to figure out, location, wardrobe and then what will he be doing on the cover, it was always just hanging out there for weeks on end waiting for a date, time and place to land so the rest of the pieces could be jammed in.

I'm sure it's quite a different experience working at GQ, VF or Time where the celebrities and politicians have heard of your publication and are actually interested in appearing on the cover. I've always been in the hapless position of pitching a publicist and providing material to actually prove we're worthy enough for a celebrity to grace us with their presence.

The importance of the cover image, coverlines, background, expression, wardrobe is at an all time high these days because advertisers need some sign of the health of a magazine and newsstand sales are a decent indicator because consumers are free to decide what purchase to make that month. Except everyone is trying to game the system so the coverlines, subjects and many times the photography have turned into such predictable garbage, because everyone is using the same handful of words and subjects that have proven effective at capturing eyeballs.

Who should we put on the cover? How about someone who actually wants to be there and that the audience cares about. How about someone we can spend some time with a write a meaningful story and take interesting pictures of. I look forward to the day when magazines can return to serving their audience and not the newsstand. Until then you're stuck with 109, free, biggest, hot, ultimate, travel, toys, secrets, great, perfect, best, sex, abs, weight-loss, getaway, new, insider, easy, delicious, shortcuts, paired with a celebrity you keep seeing over and over on the covers of magazines.-------------------------


Rolling Stone: A Picture's Worth a Thousand Coverlines
by Matt Haber
via rollingstone.com
No Words: Obama
Mere words cannot express the awesomeness that is Barack Obama. At least that's what the new cover of Rolling Stone tells-or doesn't tell-us. The cover of the magazine's new issue features only a photograph of a smiling Senator Obama (with prominent flag pin!) and no text whatsoever. In keeping with the photo theme, Rolling Stone's Web site features a photo gallery called Barack Obama, a History in Pictures, with a whopping 98 (!) images of the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate.
The wordless cover is not Rolling Stone's first. The motif has also been used by the magazine for other important, "words are not enough" stories like the deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison.
It was also used to great effect on February 1995 for a cover story about Demi Moore.

BoSacks: Looking at the Future of New LaunchesBy

BoSacks: Looking at the Future of New Launches

By BoSacks

http://www.pubexec.com/story/story.bsp?sid=107630&var=story

Will the increasing costs of entry make print publishing a world where only the brave and truly committed dare to go?

As you may know, my friend Samir Husni, also known as Mr. Magazine, tracks new magazine launches. He has done so for decades and has amassed a wealth of data. In his latest announcement, the overall numbers for our business are less than stellar. Many possible reasons exist for this decline. Both Husni and I can postulate about its causes, but neither of us actually knows.

According to Husni: "The number of new magazine launches in the first quarter of 2008 (150) increased by five titles compared to Q1 2007. [While it was an increase,] it is still a far cry from the introduction of 192 new magazines in the same time period in 2006. However . . . only 41 magazines were launched with the intention to be published at least four times a year compared with 50 in 2007, and 72 in 2006."

Husni goes on to ask: "So what does this mixed bag of numbers mean? Not much. Since I have started tracking new magazine launches, I have witnessed a two or three years' decline after a very healthy and busy year. [2005] was a very healthy year-1,013 new magazines were launched. The decline started in 2006. We are in our third year of decline. In 2006, we [saw] 901 new launches. The number dropped to 715 last year, and if the trend of the previous years continues, we will see another drop again this year before the numbers bounce back. Call it market correction if you please, but definitely it is not a sign that print is on its way out."

Well, on that last point, Mr. Magazine and I agree. Printed magazines are not on their way out. Not by a long shot. I believe that the printed magazine will have a prosperous run until the advent and adaptation of new technologies, which will finally surpass the printed magazine around 2025. So there is some breathing room left. And even in 2025, magazines will not be completely gone, and those publishers established to produce them will do just fine. But I do believe that by 2025, the printed magazine will not be the predominant way that the public will read, but rather only one of the ways. Sort of like it is now, only more so.

So what will happen to Husni's belief that there will be a predictable parabolic curve of highs and lows of new title releases? I think there will always be some high points of new releases and some low points. But as we move into the future there will be periods of lower highs and lower lows. And the long-term trend will be a decreased number of new printed titles, until we reach a new level of sustainability.

That new sustainability will be predicated on the dictates of the new information age, balanced with the cost structure of print-and-ship manufactured goods. This may not be a bad thing for the printing and publishing industry. Perhaps a more expensive entry fee to be a printed publisher will lead to a greater survival rate, as only the brave and the truly committed will apply. I believe we will reach a new successful, sustainable plateau of new releases more in line with the new business realities of the day.

The further the reach of a new digital infrastructure, the less drive there will be to spend money on printed products. Publishing has always had a component of vanity attached to it. Almost everybody wants to be a publisher. In the past, the only way to do that was to put ink on paper. It was significantly less costly than it is today to materialize those vanity impulses. I think we will find that the new world order is based on dematerialization.

The dematerialization business plan can send billions of words anywhere on the planet in an instant with no material form and no manufacturing expenditure. So, as usual, Mr. Magazine and I agree on some points and disagree on others. For today, we agree that the printed magazine is not going away any time soon, but disagree on the relevance of the decreasing trend in new startups.

Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a printing/publishing industry consultant and president of The Precision Media Group (BoSacks.com). He is also the co-founder of the research company Media-Ideas (Media-Ideas.net), and publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, circulator and almost every other job this industry has to offer.

BoSacks Speaks Out: Truth on the IDG Story

BoSacks Speaks Out: Truth on the IDG Story

BoSacks Speaks Out: This article has an interesting perspective on the IDG story I posted yesterday. Here is my take on this whole process.

Publishing and making money on the written word is not going out of style or business. We have been writing and recording our history for 25,000 years that I know of. Yes, I said 25,000 thousand years. But that publishing time line is another story for another day.

The only thing that is interesting and important now is that the medium upon which we survive is changing. If you think that people are going to stop writing and stop making a profit on that writing, then you are reading the wrong newsletter, at the wrong time, on the wrong day, and you are also grievously mistaken.

This planet will have profitable writing and advertising until we transcend the needs for any physical instrumentality at all. So what we need to focus on is this - where is the money? Where is the money coming from to pay for writing all the interesting words?

Do you think that in five years or ten or twenty no one will be writing, publishing and making a profit on the enterprising work? Do you think that organizations, both big and small, will not be distributing news, stories, and, perhaps most importantly of all, the "craft" information of how to do things to the general Public?

The real question is not if there is going to be any publishing; no, the real question on every body's mind is this - where do I fit in? What will my employment be like in five, ten and twenty years? How will I feed my family? Do I have the necessary skills to stay in this industry and make money? Those are the real questions.

And the answer to those questions is still in formation. There are still multi-billions of dollars in the print universe. Media that matters is in flux. Media that makes money is in flux. Our media universe is changing faster than we can possibly comprehend.

Here is Bo's last part of this rant. Stay loose. Stay informed. Broaden your professional interests and experiences to the maximum. You will never know what part of your training will be important until it is flying at you at Internet speeds. You need the smarts, the agility and the experience to recognize the next opportunity as it speeds by your desk. The future is bright for publishing, and there will be a need for employees to make that new world a profitable one. The only thing that is changing is the distribution platform, not the need for people to run the systems that distribute the words to the people who wish to read those words.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895, Act I

Happy IDG story no salve for dying media companies
Posted by: Aaron Pressman
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=monkzmcab.0.n6eujccab.cuf4zubab.1&ts=S0340&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessweek.com%2F


There's a happy-dappy profile of tech publishing and conference giant International Data Group in today's New York Times. The story notes how IDG's publishing arm got 86% of its revenue from print and 14% from the web five years ago but now its getting slightly over half its revenue from the web. Wow. Indeed, this is seen as some kind of important and hopeful sign for the publishing and media business at large, with a comparison to the decision by The Capital Times newspaper to abandon its print edition and a closing quote from venture capitalist Stewart Alsop that "what's happening at I.D.G. is a fairly accurate map for every other publishing organization."

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, especially for my own industry, but using what happened at IDG as a map for the rest of the publishing industry would be like using Christopher Columbus's charts to fly to the moon. There's a publishing pink elephant in the room that nobody in the NYT's story seems to notice. Most of IDG's publications are what's known as controlled circulation. Readers paid nothing but were selected to receive titles like Infoworld gratis based on their attraction to certain advertisers. There is no subscription revenue to the publisher and the publisher still bears all the costs of printing and mailing. So when IDG shifts a publication to the web and stops printing, it can cut costs to the bone and shift advertisers to its web site.

But most publishers charge for subscriptions - in fact they charge a lot. The New York Times collected $227 million from subscribers in the first quarter, for example, along with $458 million in ad revenue. For mainstream publishers, that's a much bigger potential loss from the seemingly obvious and simple shift online depicted in the IDG story.

The article also raises questions about advertiser behavior. A tech-industry trade publication's advertisers come from a narrow slice of the entire ad market, a slice that's likely more comfortable going online and more likely to be selling directly online than other segments. But when you look at the whole ecosystem of advertisers, especially the big players in mainstream publications, you find a rather different attitude. It's a lot easier to imagine Cisco Systems and Salesforce.com shifting ads to a web-based version of Infoworld than it is to see Tiffanys or Bulgari moving from the New York Times Sunday Magazine to the web. Research I've cited in the past examining the revenue shift for mainstream publishers concluded that its an almost insurmountable mountain.

Finally, I'm also a little wary of stories about private companies that don't disclose all their financial information the way public companies do. We know that publishing is only one part of IDG's business but not how big a part. We know the publishing division got a higher percentage of revenue from the web in 2007 than in 2002 but not anything about the dollar amounts involved. I emailed a PR rep at IDG to see if they'd disclose more info but haven't heard back. In the meantime, there's less than meets the eye for the rest of the publishing industry from IDG's transformation.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I worked at an IDG magazine called The Industry Standard for a few years that was shut down by the company.

BoSacks Speaks Out: What is happening in our industry?

BoSacks Speaks Out: What is happening in our industry?
www.bosacks.com

What is happening in our industry? Where are we going? And if we are going anywhere, how are we going to get there? Being dead center of the publication information fulcrum as I am, I see it all, hear it all, and well know that I don't know it all. But I do know quite a few things.

I will briefly lay out a few thoughts for your perusal and feedback.

1) Although changing, the publishing industry is not leaving this planet. It is not dying, nor even unwell. It is robust and merely going through a mighty technological transformation, a metamorphosis if you will, of huge proportions and reach. We are growing into something else. Our reach, our ability to find readership is stronger than ever. Our once small pond of potential readers has grown to an ocean. And it is no longer a one-way street. We can write and distribute our product and our readers can write/vent/agree right back at us and to our other readers too. The old one-way street is now a multi-pathed intersection of six lane highways with traffic in all directions

2) Printers should have no fear; they will do fine in the next phase of publishing. They may print shorter runs of magazines, but will no doubt print more titles, not fewer. And as everybody knows, printers make most of their profit on make-readies. So this could/should be considered a good thing. Those printers that are efficient, technologically astute and embrace the new workflows will prosper.

3) It can be a writers/editors dream world. There are more ways for writers to have an outlet then ever before. The potential of sustained readership is almost unlimited. And as always the proof is in the pudding. If it is a worthwhile set of words strung together in an interesting fashion, there is always hope for writers' revenue. One man on a small island in a small lake in the upstate Berkshire Mountains of New York can communicate daily with the world at large. And they in turn can talk back to same niche global group.
It is a cultural and professional exchange and every member benefits from the exposure.

4) Production and circulation professionals will still be needed to put it all together and sling the written product around the globe, either in print or in a digital format. Will they be called production personnel or circulators? I have no idea. But the functions and the responsibilities remain the same. Somebody writes, somebody sells and somebody distributes with the best technology at hand.

So as we move forward through this transformation nothing has changed except our efficiency to do better at what we already do - distribute thought and ideas; that is, communication. We sell and monetize a compendium of stored memory, things that our readers didn't know or wanted to know more of.

What do you think? Do you think I overstate the case? Are you ready to fly? Are you ready to move into the next golden age of publishing?

BoSacks Speaks Out: The World's Newest Language

BoSacks Speaks Out: The World's Newest Language

I found this article to be interesting and humorous. It's about the morphing of our language. When you get right down to it our publishing language has changed right along with our technology. The words and acronyms that we use and throw around so freely today would be nothing but gibberish to people of our industry one generation ago. And that will most likely not change in the near future. Even our job descriptions and responsibilities are changing.

I was at one of my favorite industry gatherings a few weeks ago. It is called the Publishers Production Forum. This special group of production directors never fails to have some of the best and most pointed dialog anywhere to be found in our industry. The last meeting was no exception. From that meeting I heard the following exclaimed, "Prepress, it's 10% of the budget and 90% of the talk." That is funny and that is true. I will add an additional thought of my own. What do you still consider prepress? Is what goes onto the web with no parallel print component still considered prepress? If not, what is it? See what I mean, our language is changing.

Let me take that question for you publishers and production people one step further. Do you production people still consider your job as a manufacturing job? Is that what you really do? Do you still manufacture multiple widgets in the shape and form of magazines or are you more and more moving electrons from place to place, rather than hard atoms. Clearly ten years ago Directors of Manufacturing mostly moved "things". They used industrial strength manufacturing skills and technology to make things and ship them. What percentage of your job would you still define as making and shipping tangible "things"?

What will your job be called 10 years from now? Will you be DIM? Digital Infrastructure Management?

Will you still use ADIS and AdsML with DISC to coordinate GRACoL and ICE? Will we still have papiNet and PROSE/XML working to deliver intelligently with JDF and SNL?
Yep . . . languages sure do change. Right now I'm sort of reminiscing about hot lead and M spaces, galleys and paste-ups and the odd science of shipping boards to my printer.

"The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them"
Stephen King quotes (American Writer, best known for his horror novels. b.1947)

The world's newest language: Nerdic
It's the language you learned talking to tech support
By Heidi Dawley
http://www.medialifemagazine.com

It's long been a goal of one-worlders to develop a universal language, and for years their hopes were on Esperanto, a faux language developed in 1887 by a Dr. L.L. Zamenhof to serve as the word's official second language. It's not caught on.

But Nerdic has, or soon will. So many already speak it, even if they do not recognize it as a language as such, and no matter that academics pooh-pooh the entire notion.

Indeed, new research claims Nerdic is the fastest-growing language in Europe, evolving even faster than English, a language that morphs and evolves and recreates itself daily.

Nerdic is tech speak. It's the language we've all been forced to learn in order to use our computers and survive on the internet.

The new research, from Pixmania, an electronics retailer in Europe, contends Nerdic has become the shared language of Europe, allowing people to communicate across borders, and as evidence it marches out the fact that the language added 100 new words last year. That's three times the number of new English words added into the Oxford English Dictionary.

"It should be its own language to make it proper," says Stuart Miles, editor of Pocket-lint.co.uk, a consumer technology site. He argues that technology has revolutionized the way people talk and that Nerdic is the outcome of that revolution. "When I was young, if you didn't understand a word and asked someone about it, a grownup would say, 'look it up in the dictionary.' Now you can't do that."

Miles helped Pixmania by putting together a list of hip and happening Nerdic words.

Take RickRoll, for instance. That's the verb used to describe one of the latest practical jokes circulating the web. It occurs when someone sends you a great sounding link but instead you are intentionally misdirected to a video of "Never Gonna Give You Up," by the 1980s one-hit wonder Rick Astley.

There's also egosurfing, another verb, and something that is highly embarrassing to be caught doing. It's the act of surfing the web to find - you guessed it - your very own name.

Miles also points to some super techy words. There's Wimax, the name for supersized Wi-Fi networks. And there's femtocell, the name for the mini, in-home mobile phone masts due to become popular in the next few years.

Pixmania says it has applied to Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office to have Nerdic recognized as an official language on the basis that it is spoken by 750,000 Europeans, to say nothing of all the others around the world.

Here the question logically rises. Is Pixmania really serious, or is this just a prank to grab headlines? The latter seems to be the case.

For one thing, the press office for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has yet to uncover anyone in their organization that has heard about this application.

Secondly, the chances of Nerdic succeeding in becoming a second language look slim. Pixmania may be having fun with the idea, but serious language people are not amused.

"Basically tech speak is just a variant of English," says David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at Britain's University of Bangor and the author of an upcoming book on texting called "Txtng: The Gr8 Db8."

He says that in order to make it a new language, you would need thousands and thousands of new words and, importantly, new grammar. "That's the critical thing." Crystal notes that Nerdic has none to speak of.

Colleen Cotter, lecturer in the linguistics department at Queen Mary, University of London, agrees, noting that, as fun and clever as it is, Nerdic really amounts to a lot of new words. It is more reminiscent of a pidgin form of a language.

In fact, Nerdic is going to have to work hard to live up to another language popular with techies, Klingon, the language of the Klingon people in the television series "Star Trek."

This language came complete with vocabulary and grammar. "Klingon is a real language. Nerdic is just a wannabe when you compare it with Klingon," says Cotter.

MPA Retail Conference and Time Inc's Green Thinking.

BoSacks Speaks Out: Here is some news and thoughts about green publishing, paper consumption, and the consumer reaction. It is a worthwhile read and I have inserted a question to ponder at the end.

Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else's traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man's character is, the better it fits him.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)


From the MPA Retail Conference Bill Mickey reported the following about Time Inc's thinking green.

Time Inc. has been monitoring its environmental impact to such a degree that it employs David Refkin as director of sustainable development. "Part of my job is risk management and promoting positive change and turning it into a business opportunity," he says, adding that the publisher buys 500,000 tons of paper from 53 mills per year.

As part of an operation-wide sustainability effort, Refkin says that the company has boosted its certified sustainable forestry paper content. Currently, 70 percent of its fiber meets CSF standards, up 25 percent from 2002. And paper is going increasingly global. "More and more of our wood will be coming from different countries," he says, noting that it's becoming important to work with countries to make sure they're following responsible foresting practices.

Bill Mickey also reported on the green thing that:

Consumer values--again, the intangibles--are increasingly including an awareness of a product's impact on the environment. In a panel discussion called "Consumers, Retail and the Environment," Steve French, managing partner of The Natural Marketing Institute, noted that "consumers are becoming much more eco-conscious. There's an alignment of personal values with companies and brands." And that, according to his research, one-third of Americans are willing to pay 20 percent more for environmentally-friendly products.

French pointed out that consumers are becoming more aware of, and interested in, the magazine production process, and warned publishers not to be surprised if consumers hold them "responsible" for ensuring unsold magazines are actually recycled. Indeed, Dave Sherman, partner at Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting, noted that despite the efforts of publishers to convert to recycled paper content, pushing unsold copies around the system essentially cancels that out.

I couldn't agree more. Although in my newsletter there has been some dispute of the actual percentages of unsold copies ending up in recycling centers, there is no dispute that on average we print 10 and sell 3. If we fix that part of the equation, then we don't have to worry as much about the recycling percentages. The eventual goal has to be no returns. It will take some time to get there, but there are at least some initiatives under way to bring us into at least thinking about those greater efficiencies.

Here is a legitimate question for my old friend David Refkin, out of the 500,000 tons of paper he buys each year, how much of that paper gets into the hands of the consumer?
BoSacks
-30-

BoSacks Speaks Out: Ad Revenues Plunge of 50%

BoSacks Speaks Out: Ad Revenues Plunge of 50%
www.bosacks.com

I am about to dive into an old rant. I do it because it is an important concept and because I have almost a thousand new subscribers since I last vented about this subject. Everybody who reads this newsletter knows or should know that I am a magazine guy through and through. So, it's not unusual that I am continually barraged with questions like; "Bo, why do you keep such a strong focus on the newspaper industry?"

I have a dozen reasons why I think it is an important industry to track, not the least of which is my canary in the mine shaft theory. I used to explain this more often to my readership than I do now, and I believe that it has been at least a year since I have done so. I will now attempt to correct that oversight, because I still deem it a very important industry for magazine professionals to track.

Simply put, the newspaper industry has been a forecaster of magazine trends for over 60 years. I believe that the newspaper industry still acts for the magazine industry just like the vulnerable little canaries that coal miners carried into the coal mines in times past. When there was little clean air, the canaries "fainted" first, warning the miners of pending trouble. A similar process could/should be said for newspapers being more sensitive and vulnerable in the publishing world in these times of economic stress and business model upheavals. It is the newspapers who are "fainting" first, months, perhaps years, before the same conditions hit the magazine industry. But make no mistake, it is a very similar mineshaft that we are in. If they are fainting and croaking, we had best pay close attention and know the reasons why.

We all know that many of the old business models have changed. Newspapers and magazines have changed dramatically. Surely, the advertising community has changed in, if nothing else, the many different and new venues to spend advertising dollars in. Not to mention their obsessive search for accountability. Add into that volatile mixture the apparently unstoppable oncoming recession and you have a tsunami media/magazine advertising event.

So, yes, I track the newspaper industry pretty damn closely and only send out a fraction of what I read and know about it.

The newspaper industry is a media brother or sister. We have almost the same genetic code. They are us in different clothing. When they get mugged, we are next in line in the alley. We are in the same boat riding on a very similar platform.

Today's news about the ad revenue plunge is very important. Because newspapers are dailies, they more closely reflect the economy and the insights and wisdom, or lack thereof, of advertising spending. Whatever the trend is going to be, up or down, it is reflected first in newspapers and second in magazines.

With all this off my chest, I still think we are headed for a great second golden age of publishing (information distribution). Yes, it will be different. Yes, our business models will have to change. But if we are smart we will notice that what we can and do still provide is exactly what people have always wanted. They want information. They want information in the form of news or entertainment, or crafts or fashion, or culture or any of a thousand niche subjects. That is what we do best and will continue to do. We just need to be where the information seekers are and provide great content worth reading.


"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."

Herman Melville (American short-story Writer, Novelist and Poet. Best known for his novels of the sea, including his masterpiece, Moby Dick. 1819-1891)


NAA Reveals Biggest Ad Revenue Plunge in More Than 50 Years By Jennifer Saba Published: March 28, 2008 12:55 PM ET
NEW YORK The newspaper industry has experienced the worst drop in advertising revenue in more than 50 years. According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 -- the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950. The drop-off points to an economic slowdown on top of the secular challenges faced by the industry. The second worst decline in advertising revenue occurred in 2001 when it fell 9.0%.Total advertising revenue in 2007 -- including online revenue -- decreased 7.9% to $45.3 billion compared to the prior year. There are signs that online revenue is beginning to slow as well. Internet ad revenue in 2007 grew 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006. In 2006, online ad revenue had soared 31.4% to $2.6 billion. In 2005, it jumped 31.4% to $2 billion. As newspaper Web sites generate more advertising revenue, the growth rate naturally slows. The NAA reported that online revenue now represents 7.5% of total newspaper ad revenue in 2007 compared to 5.7% in 2006.That growth could not stave off the losses in the print however. National print advertising revenue dropped 6.7% to $7 billion last year. Retail slipped 5% to $21 billion. Classified plunged 16.5% to $14.1 billion."Even with the near-term challenges posed to print media by a more fragmented information environment and the economic headwinds facing all advertising media, newspapers publishers are continuing to drive strong revenue growth from their increasingly robust Web platforms," John Sturm, president and CEO of the NAA, said in a statement.