Are we finally beginning to recover from the slump in employment advertising, which has cost each daily newspaper company tens of millions of dollars in lost ads? The industry hopes so, and several larger companies were optimistic that 2004 would bring renewed growth in this area.
Offering no substance and playing it safe aren't the way to win over the most educated generation of readers in the country, writes Scripps Howard News Service columnist Joe Donatelli. He was disappointed when he saw one of his columns reprinted in the Chicago Sun-Times' Red Streak at half its length and with all the humor expunged.
CareerBuilder.com, the popular online career site, will shift its focus from people who are out of work to those who are gainfully employed, but disgruntled, with a $17 million campaign breaking next month. Three humorous 30-second TV spots, via Cramer-Kressalt, Chicago, will make their debut Jan. 5 nationwide on network and cable. The spots show employees fantasizing about dramatic ways to escape their current, miserable jobs. Radio, print and outdoor will support.
America Online said Wednesday that it launched a preview of its upcoming Love.com Web personals service, which aims to ride the company's success with instant-messaging software into the lucrative Internet dating sector.
Campaign advertising will no longer be the province of television stations if newspaper owners have their way. The New York Times Co. said yesterday it plans to make an "aggressive" bid for election ads next year in the company's namesake paper and The Boston Globe.
"Help Wanted" has taken on a double meaning at newspapers in the past few years. These days, the phrase applies not only to a category of classified advertising they seek, but also to the new ideas those departments need when facing tough competition and a rough job market. One notable exception to this trend may be The Palm Beach Post.
After getting fired from Larry Flynt's L.A. Free Press, Jay Levin founded L.A. Weekly and put out the first issue on Dec. 7, 1978. Seed money came from several investors, including actor-producer Michael Douglas. In an interview with Kristine McKenna for the paper's 25th anniversary edition, Levin recalls the grueling early days when the L.A. Weekly was undercapitalized and then grew rapidly. The paper, now owned by Village Voice Media, had a strong emphasis on international as well as local news and was more progressive than it is today, Levin says. But rumors that the office was a hotbed of drug abuse and interoffice sex are wildly exaggerated.
The Indianapolis Star debuts its new tabloid, INtake Weekly, today, 12 days after its parent company, Gannett, launched IN, a glossy magazine that competes with the locally owned Indianapolis Woman. Brian A. Howey, writing for the online magazine Indianapolis Eye News, discusses tactics Gannett has used in the past to put newspaper competitors out of business and then raise its advertising rates. "If you're NUVO Publisher Kevin McKinney and his staff, INtake might as well be a gun aimed at your heads," Howey writes. He urges advertisers to continue to place ads in independent publications so Gannett doesn't become their only option.
Free newspapers aimed at young readers are, for the most part, "just dumbed-down versions of a daily newspaper," writes AAN'S Roxanne Cooper, in an editorial published in the International Newspaper Marketing Association's monthly magazine. Basing a newspaper's content on market research instead of a creative vision is getting it backwards. And if young people have such short attention spans, why are so many of them reading books during their commutes?
