Haunted by what he witnessed from the roof of his building near the World Trade Center on 9/11, Russ Smith sold his upstart weekly, New York Press, and moved his family to Baltimore. He has disparaged the city where he once edited Baltimore City Paper as "Tinytown," but old friends say he has a strange way of showing his affection. Former City Paper staff writer Michael Anft offers an in-depth look at the man who now writes a conservative column for the Baltimore weekly he once owned. Smith has said that "if you wanted to find a list of his enemies, all you had to do was pick up the Baltimore white pages," Anft says.
Online recruitment advertising hit $3.1 billion last year, with Monster.com and Yahoo! leading the way. But a new study out from Borrell Associates said newspaper-operated Web sites are poised for significant growth in the sector.
The juggernaut of online dating services, Match.com, is trying to bring its members into even closer virtual contact by incorporating an old-fashioned device: the telephone.
Radio ad spending, which enjoyed a brief respite earlier this year, continued to slump in November, with a fall in local and national ad revenue compared to a year ago. And while radio companies said fourth-quarter revenues would be hurt by comparisons with 2002's political spending, that wasn't the story behind the 4 percent decline in overall advertising revenues in November 2003. National ad sales, which wouldn't be affected by political ad spending, dropped 6 percent during the month compared with November 2002. Local ad sales dropped by 4 percent. The data was released Tuesday by the Radio Advertising Bureau.
Auto enthusiasts who attend the North American International Auto Show, kicking off this week in Detroit, may be part of a dying breed. Jupiter Research predicts that more than a third of all new car sales will be "Internet-generated" by 2008.
If the economy is reviving, many AAN papers are still waiting for the signs to show up in their ad revenues. Although national ad sales went up last year, papers reported mixed results in local advertising, their mainstay. Reasons to be hopeful in 2004 include increases in real estate and recruitment ads, diversification of ad categories, and the notion that merchants and the public have grown tired of brooding and want to feel optimistic about their economic prospects again. Sales staff need to "get the message out there" about what alternative newsweeklies have to offer, says Jim Wolf, Village Voice Media's vice president of national advertising.
As viewers, especially young men, change their TV habits, ad firms are forced to alter their advertising strategies.
