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An interesting piece here about shrinking ad revenue at newspapers. The biggest culprit? Lack of visibility into the lead generation “clickstream” when you place an ad in the paper (and oh yeah, spending a lot of money for that ad).

File under, “Well, duh.”

Seriously, I used to work freelance at various papers, and I do feel a bit of twinge when I see the world of hurt that’s landing on their industry, but I’m sure that in 1910 there were plenty of people decrying to end of the Horse-Drawn Carriage Age.

The issue here is declining circulation because of other alternatives. Declining circulation causes loss of ad revenue, which means that fewer people go to the newspaper for find those deals. Meanwhile, folks are going online to find the best deals on cars, clothes, cellphones, and more.

Plus, I think there’s just a healthy bit of skepticism on the part of the public for any news outlet that is so dependent on advertising for its survival. Why would I trust the hometown paper to tell the true story of the layoffs at Acme Inc. if Acme is the single biggest ad buyer at that paper?

Something else that was interesting in this post: “you investigate.” Basically, the newspaper in Ft. Myers stole a play from the Web 2.0 playbook by asking its readers to help them break a story. Now that’s an interesting notion.

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/business/15916839.htm

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