Ad spending has increased in newspapers since a year ago August. The third quarter was particularly kind to most of the big newspaper publishing companies, with all but a few showing slight or moderate growth. That's mostly held up in the latest round of monthly revenue reports, but there's one lagging indicator that's been dragging down classifieds, ad it's one of the biggest cash- flow generators for every newspaper: Help- wanted.

Continue ReadingAre Help Wanted Ads Coming Back?

As if U.S. magazine publishers didn't have enough to worry about, now they're also experiencing eroding readership. Magazine readership among major consumer magazines measured by Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI) declined 1.9 percent between the fall of 2002 and just-released estimates from MRI's fall 2003 survey.

Continue ReadingMagazines Face Readership Erosion

India Blue (pictured), 48, was a staff photographer and music writer at the alt-weekly since 1995. According to the Hartford Courant, she was a single mother with two college-age sons who "was very active in prison outreach and regularly visited inmates in Niantic." Advocate Publisher Janet Reynolds says, "She was a great woman and a great employee."

Continue ReadingHartford Advocate Staffer Dies in Car Crash

The Napster Kitty is now the star of a new $20 million advertising campaign that includes a series of multiple TV spots that reprise the history of the outlaw online file swapping service that triggered a revolution in the way music products are consumed and marketed.

Continue ReadingNapster Rolls Out New Marketing

The Gannett paper that arguably started the trend reports on the daily newspaper industry's response to its ongoing readership decline. Newspaper analyst John Morton claims the industry's new quick-read publications "shout 'this is not your father's newspaper.''' AAN's Richard Karpel says they're "just dumbed-down news" and complains, ''(a)t a time when 70% of the public thinks Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, the last thing we need is dumber newspapers."

Continue ReadingUSA Today on the “Bite-Sized Nuggets” News Trend
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Nine months ago, these people were everywhere—-braying on street corners from Brea to San Clemente, waving flags the size of Montana, shaking handmade signs demanding we SUPPORT THE TROOPS and SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT. They appeared on radio and TV, spoke from city halls, and yelled from passing cars. They got their war, and now the body count is rising, the administration has no exit plan, we can’t find Saddam Hussein or his malevolent WMDs—-and where are all the blowhards now? An OC Weekly from the home front.

Continue ReadingWhere Have All the Blowhards Gone: An Iraq Invasion Retrospective!

After three stressful years during which his wife and co-founder passed away and two of his stepchildren were diagnosed with chronic illnesses, Matthew Spaur says he decided to sell because he "no longer (has) the energy to give (the) newspaper the leadership it deserves." Taking over the smaller of Spokane's two alternative weeklies is a partnership led by Paulette Burgess, a former writer for the paper and recent editor of the local city mag.

Continue ReadingPublisher: “Why I’m Selling The Local Planet Weekly”

Like many big-city alternative newspapers, sex ads fill the back pages of the New York Press, and. according to the paper's classified manager, "It's not a secret that most of the girls are prostitutes." Furthermore, police officials "in some cities" buy classifieds to set up sting operations and they also "pressure" classified managers to give up the names of their adult advertisers, Allan Wolper reports. "We know that almost every one of those ads involve sex for money ," says Sgt. Chris Bray of Phoenix vice, which places undercover ads in the Phoenix New Times as well as The Arizona Republic. "We make about 10 arrests a month from the ads and get about eight convictions."

Continue ReadingSex Ads are “Law Enforcement Tip Sheets,” says E&P Columnist