Yes, and I'd always thought it might be the other way around. Buying the rag drove want ads. If people don't buy papers in sufficient numbers, ad rates charged suffer.
IOW circulation trumps all after, including ad rates when all's said & done.
abb has a few interesting points to make, I'll hi-lite the ones resonating with me.
"It is almost all about the advance of technology. I know most of us here at FRee Republic like to think the impending doom of the Drive-By Media is because of liberal bias. I don’t think that’s it."
Man-oh-man.
That's one really hard for me to get my arms around.
If you're correct? Then the *problem's* with my POV.
A POV based on the way things used to be, no longer germane.
"The Drive-By’s liberal bias has certainly alienated much of their potential customer base..."
Yes they have, and you're asserting this alienation played little --if any-- role in their imminent demise?
See my apparently antiquated POV dictated because they aliented so many, they hung themselves.
Where else would [that] best be seen in B&W, show up first for the rags?
Advertising revenues -- be it print ads or classified and directly due to shrinking circ numbers.
Don't either kind of advertiser want their product or service in front of as many eyes as possible? No eyes = no customers?
Now while the Internet provided a badly needed alternative they did so by being quicker, more efficient (for their profits) and did it all inexpensively as compared to the rags, their employees, unions, fleets of trucks etc. AND the Internet got the message in front of all kinds of people, reading at all hours finding specifically what they wanted where ever they are.
And consider Craig's List for example -- the BIG one -- rags particularly love citing for tanking classified ads don't do news.
This thing's shaping up to be a chicken & egg thing. LOL
"But if the internet hadn’t been invented, the newspaper industry would still be fat and sassy."
Aye, no arguing that fact a'tall. ;^)
Interesting to contemplate what may happen after the rags have folded and the Internet the top dog.
That one's probably best left to an Alvin Toffler wannabe. :^)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising
In June 1836, French newspaper La Presse is the first to include paid advertising in its pages, allowing it to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its profitability and the formula was soon copied by all titles.
http://earlyradiohistory.us/sec020.htm
COMMERCIAL SPONSORSHIP
In February, 1922, AT&T announced its plan to establish a national radio network and sell airtime — which it called “toll broadcasting” — for programs supported by advertising. At this time AT&T believed, based on patent rights it claimed under a series of cross-licencing agreements made with various companies including General Electric and Westinghouse, that it was the only company in the U.S. allowed to operate broadcasting stations, with the exception of a few permitted to other companies under the cross-licencing agreements, plus a small number of stations which had purchased Western Electric transmitters. The idea of radio stations broadcasting commercial messages was, however, very controversial. In the summer of 1922, there were already concerns about stations including commercial messages, as Radio: Problem Created by Advertising, from the August 13, 1922 New York Times, complained that “Many a concert or lecture has been spoiled by a station broadcasting advertising information such as the price of eggs or the bargains at some store.” In the July, 1922 issue of The Radio Dealer, a letter from AT&T Publicity Department employee J. H. Ellsworth gave AT&T’s side of the debate in Explains Broadcasting of Advertising Programming, stating that “the fear which is sometimes expressed that advertising will destroy broadcasting is seen to be without foundation”. But another Publicity Department employee, Westinghouse’s J. C. McQuiston, was more skeptical, and in his article appearing in the August, 1922 Radio News, Advertising by Radio. Can It and Should It Be Done?, a caption editorialized that “Advertising by radio cannot be done; it would ruin the radio business, for nobody would stand for it”. And a letter from Hugo Gernsback — now sixteen years removed from the days when he had introduced Telimco Wireless Outfits — proclaimed that “If the future of radio rests upon a foundation of advertising, it would be better that broadcasting did not exist at all”, according to Radio and Advertising, printed in the May 6, 1923 New York Times.
I cite as evidence the difficulty conservative newspapers have had establishing themselves. The Washington Times has never made the first dime of profit and is heavily subsidized. Also see upthread the conservative Philly newspaper that folded.
That said, witness the relative success of Fox News as an alternative to CNN and MSNBC. By all accounts, it makes a lot of money for Rupert.