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Reflections of a Newsosaur

Musings (and occasional urgent warnings) of a veteran media executive, who fears our news-gathering companies are stumbling to extinction

Online CPMs fell 46% since JanuaryOctober 16

The average online advertising rate plunged by almost half in the first nine months of the year, according to an industry survey. Demonstrating that even interactive advertising is not immune to the deterioration of the economy, PubMatic, a company which helps publishers optimize their revenues, reports that the average rate for 1,000 ad impressions fell to 27 cents in the third quarter from 50

$7.5B sales plunge forecast for newspapersOctober 13

Unless the global economy miraculously turns around on a dime, newspaper advertising revenue may plunge $7.4 billion in 2008, according to a new projection attempting to assess the impact of the meltdown on the industry. Should this forecast prove to be correct, sales would tumble by 16.5% to $37.9 billion from last year’ s depressed level and the industry will have lost a staggering 23.4% of

A way to stay alive on weak ad daysOctober 9

With desperate times demanding desperate measures, a growing number of newspapers are considering the most desperate measure of all: Skipping print editions on the days of the week when ad sales are the weakest. It already has happened in Noblesville, IN; McPherson, KS; Mesa, AZ; Gilroy, CA, Ocean City, NJ, and Cambridge, MD, according to Peter Zollman, who has been tracking the trend at

Youth-inized ChiTrib jolts core readersOctober 6

The new Chicago Tribune is a dumbed-down dud in the opinion of a passionate and dedicated group of core newspaper readers back in my hometown. There is an admitted bias to the critics, as each of the eight members of this impromptu focus group happens to be a journalist old enough to be a fellow alumnus of the Chicago Daily News, which ceased publication in 1978. But these friends and former

Drudge shows how to do newsSeptember 30

As I scrambled from website to website this morning for the latest news while my retirement melted away, the place that consistently had the most complete, convenient and up-to-date information was the Drudge Report. For all the millions of dollars and thousands of people employed at the mainstream newspapers, broadcast networks and cable channels, Drudge had assembled the perfect mix of salient