More really bad news for newspapers, summarized by AdAge:
Newspaper ad revenue fell almost $2 billion in the third quarter for a record 18.1% decline, according to new statistics from the Newspaper Association of America. What’s worse, newspapers’ online ad revenue fell for the second quarter in a row.
The historic drop resulted from a worsening economy that sharply exacerbated long-term challenges already confronting the newspaper industry, and it affected all kinds of newspaper ads. National ad sales fell 18.4%, classifieds sank 30.9%, and the biggest category, retail, slid 11.7%. Newspapers’ online ad sales, where everyone is hoping some part of the future business model resides, accelerated their decline with a 3% drop. Online ad sales slipped 2.4% in the second quarter.
Here’s the link directly to the NAA numbers, broken out by national, retail and classifieds (and further by ad category).
There’s not much to say except more pain, cost cutting and layoffs are on the way.
The notion of outsourcing reporting to India as the future of newspapers, as discussed in this Maureen Dowd column, is basically a non-starter (as they say). You can outsource certain types of writing that are very straightforward and factual. However, as with Indian call centers for American companies, the “inauthenticity” will be self-evident and people will spurn those publications that rely on “outsourced reporting.”
Screenwerk 
December 2, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Had Ms. Dowd ever outsourced writing projects to India, she wouldn’t have ever suggested it.
December 2, 2008 at 8:26 pm
She’s not suggesting. She’s reporting another’s view.
December 2, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Ha! That will to teach me not to assume, infer etc. then without further investigation.
Great catch Greg and nice piece from Ms. Dowd (my apologies to Ms. Dowd)
1,000 words for $7.50? .0075 per word is significantly less than the .01 to .03 per word rate quoted on most freelance sites.
What auto workers, journalists and every other American worker for the most part have failed to realize is that there are now somewhere between 100 million to 250 million new workers on the market who are looking for work.
Each of these new workers or their friends and family have recently begun tasting the fruits of capitalism and they want more.
They are also willing to work for 1/10 to 1/100 of what their American counterparts have been “working” for.
All forms of labor will be under constant pricing pressure from now on.
Specialists/thinkers may be the only category of worker left immune to the new crowd labor force.