Newspapers Fight Back for Advertisers

Major newspapers in the US seem, to their praise, less than willing to just submit to the Internet in terms of reaching the masses, and have made that abundantly clear on Monday, when a group titled the “Newspaper Project” featured ads on the front pages of publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, which read that more people bought the paper than those who watched Sunday's Super Bowl. Almost all newspapers are now faced with serious problems, including a sharp drop in sales, a reduced number of readers, a loss of profit from advertising, and the migration of their base population to the online environment.

Those moving away from the newspapers say that it's useless to continue buying the paper, as long as the Internet provides the news at the click of a button, and can feature everything from science and entertainment to economy and politics. It's also free, and people nowadays sip their coffees while browsing the web, instead of the traditional image of someone reading the news from the paper in the morning. However, it would seem that publishers seem very little inclined to accept this fact.

Monday's ad drew attention to the fact that well over 100 million people read the newspapers everyday, and, moreover, that the high-quality work many of these publications produced could not be easily replaced by online coverage. In fact, there are those who affirm that the media will be influenced to a far greater extent if it moves completely online, as the corporations owning the sites will have the possibility to censor the news that reaches the general public.

According to the group, more than 16,500 people working with newspapers were fired last year, or took buyouts to avoid getting laid off. Such a large number of trained professionals shouldn't have to hit the streets, the group points out, as their expertise cannot be easily replaced online. Many of the big names in terms of newspapers are now under threat of filing for bankruptcy, as most of them reported profit losses as large as 50 percent for the last quarter of the past year, compared to 2007.