Target Sunday Ad Goes Online, Newspapers Die a Little More
March 24, 2008Yes, it was Easter Sunday, but this week my wife wondered where the Target Sunday ads were. In another body blow to newspapers like the LA Times, the ad insert was only online. Yes, a few trees were saved, but at what cost to readers?
Newspapers have been dying a death of a thousand cuts, from Craigslist grabbing all the classified ads (it’s hard to compete with free) and shrinking circulations and of course, vastly reduced real estate advertising. If Target and the other big retailers go away, that’s a mighty big nail in the coffin.
Newspapers are also losing some of their best writers, whether they’re pushed or jump out of the burning building. At the Mercury News in San Jose before the last round of cuts, reporters were told to wait at home by their phones. If they didn’t get a call by 10AM, they could go to work.
Dean Takahashi, a well-respected technology journalist (who I know a little bit), put it this way:
“I guess the worst thing that could happen is the business could fall off a cliff the way the music business did,” said Dean Takahashi, a former technology reporter for the Mercury News, who left last month to become a blogger just before a round of layoffs. “I worry that is possible.”
As for the content, formerly known as the news, it’s too simple to say ‘it will all go online.’ Most people I know don’t like to read longer pieces on line, certainly not on a Blackberry-sized screen.
If newspapers and the way they surprise you with local, international news, sports, fashion and more disappear, we’ll be not a little, but a lot, poorer.