Should you advertise in newspapers?
Of course the newspapers think you should – However, their current behaviors, and the overall conditions of the newspaper industry, indicate that you would be better off investing your money into other mediums.
Let’s analyze the newspaper industry for a moment…
The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Boston Globe, LA Times and Chicago Tribune have all recently announced that they are going to start selling advertising on the front pages of particular sections (Read More…).
Did I hear that correctly?! They are going to start selling advertising on the front pages of certain sections!? Wow… This tells me that newspapers must be hurting for advertising revenue. They are hurting so badly that they are willing to compromise portions of the paper that have traditionally been reserved solely for news content. It’s as if they are defacing a sacred piece of real estate. They seem to be breaking an unwritten rule of the industry and it’s kinda sad.
If that’s not bad enough, the newspaper industry is also looking at its worst circulation numbers in more than a decade (Read More…). This honestly does not surprise me seeing as though we are in the birth of a digital age. Online mediums are easily accessible and, more often than not, free. Web content also has interactive elements that newspapers cannot claim. The real nail in the coffin is how a reader can pull up multiple perspectives on one particular subject with complete ease. The web is obviously superior to newspapers when it comes to the actual delivery of the news.
Claims of media bias are at an all time high (Probably a result of the abundance of war coverage). If there is even the slightest possibility that your newspaper of choice is writing biased material, it’s a struggle to truly believe the words that you are reading from there on out. Our human nature is to not appreciate other people making up our minds for us. We want to hear the facts and then decide for ourselves. Again, the web triumphs newspapers in that a reader can easily surf through several news sources, with varying viewpoints, and then manufacture their own beliefs based on the information that was given.
The newspaper industry is hurting. They have allowed a competing medium to beat them at their own game. Newspapers tried to be the Internet so they could compete, but the history of business tells us that “Thou shalt not be what it tis not.†It is amazing that newspapers failed to learn this concept while they were documenting the history of other companies that have made the same mistake.
So after learning of the sh$t-storm the newspaper industry is currently experiencing, I have come to the conclusion that I would rather not spend my money on newspaper advertising. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that the newspaper medium has the potential to be beneficial to a specific kind of advertiser, but I ultimately believe that there are better advertising vehicles out there than this newspaper medium that seems to be determined to kill itself.
Wishing you continued success…
…bizMAVERICK…
Brad Williamson
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