Now that it’s been reported that newspapers lost $2 billion in revenue in one quarter, the obvious question is: where did it go?
As a colleague of mine noted recently, some switched to online, a portion got switched to cable now that it’s easy to advertise there, but most of it went away completely because real estate ads are gone (bubble bursting), car ads are gone (no credit available), and classifieds are gone (to the web).
Retail and business advertising, as well as auto and real estate dollars, will come back in the future. But where will it go? Newspapers? It seems unlikely with their strategy of raising rates while the audience is going in the opposite direction.
There is a lot of discussion about filling the void for news and information as news operations pull back to save their margins. But who will fill the void for advertising? That’s what entrepreneurial journalism is about.
The race is on.
Mark Briggs 
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