Newspaper Ad Revenue Falls Record $2 Billion

LOS ANGELES — U.S. newspaper advertising revenue collapsed by nearly $2 billion, or 18 percent, in the third quarter, according to the Newspaper Association of America, an industry group. Even online ad revenue made a small U-turn for the second quarter in a row.

The year-on-year quarterly percentage decline is the worst since since the NAA has been keeping such records and represents an increasingly rapid deceleration that began in the third quarter of 2006, when total ad spending dropped 1.5 percent.

The figures, updated on the day before Thanksgiving, show total ad spending at newspapers fell 18.1 percent to $8.94 billion, down from $10.92 billion in the third quarter last year.

The last time total quarterly ad spending fell below $9 billion was in the first quarter of 1996.

Print ad revenue dropped 19.3 percent to $8.19 billion from $10.15 billion. Online ad revenue fell 3 percent to $749.8 million from $773.0 million a year ago _ a remarkable turnaround since the steady double-digit growth from 2004 to 2007.

The 7.2 percent increase in online ad spending in the first quarter of 2008 was the last quarter of year-over-year gain.

Comments

[Fabini]

How will a decline in newspaper printing the paper manufacturing sector? I ask this in all sincerity. Will logging then suffer?

[FrictionSoul]

This isn't news. Readers have been turning away newspapers for several years in a row now. They don't know how to make money because they don't know how to report the news. They don't know how to report the news because they've become stenographers for huge PR firms that lobby Congress.

One on side you have lobbyists tell the PR side of the business what kind of news to create in order to spin reality and omit facts. Newspapers just suck this all up into their databases and publish it verbatim.

Not too long after the public starts seeing through these slick stories and realize that none of them jibe with reality; it's just propaganda, one huge advertisement for a huge company that has a reality they want to sell you on. Some drama to hook your attention, ramp up the fear and cause you to seek solace and not resolution.

Well, that got old in a hurry and they haven't done anything new.