And in Montana ...

Missoulian cuts seven positions ... doesn't say how many cuts came from editorial ...

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/08/27/bnews/br75.txt

 

Third graf:

 

I guess it did.

 

DOH ... that's what I get for trying to do three things at once

 

I'm told the two people cut were married. They moved from Roanoke a year ago. After settling in, they adopted two kids, with plans to raise them in Missoula.

Lee Enterprises axed them both.

 

You're on fired today. I love it.

 

I'm not quite sure, but thanks.

 

Not gonna ask what the other two things were ...

 

Talking on the phone with one of my reporters while a couple of my dogs were trying to jump in my lap ...

 

I might be movin' to Montana soon
Just to raise me up a crop of
Dental Floss

Raisin' it up
Waxen it down
In a little white box
That I can sell uptown

 

I admire papers that are up front with their readers in announcing the cuts, but I really wonder what it says when the Missoulan, like the KC Star, say their audiences in print and on-line are expanding, yet they're still cutting staff. If so, why hasn't the advertising followed if it was there when the audience was smaller?

 

One man's (cynical conspiracy) theory:

Because the premise was flawed to begin with. Newspapers -- and anyone else who takes advertising -- could command such a high price for it in print because nobody really knew who was paying attention to the ads. It was all assumed. Regardless of market surveys, you can't track those numbers. All you can do is track the overall audience, track your sales, and go from there.

Online, it's a different ballgame ... and the scam is up. You can track exactly how many eyeballs you're getting, exactly who's clicking on ads, exactly what an advertiser is getting for its money. And the truth is: not very much. People ignore ads as much now as they ever did, only now ... it's out in the open.

That's not just newspapers. That's print advertising in general -- it's all a scam, and it was based on a false premise: that the overall audience was actually paying attention to your ads in the first place. It ignored the fact that half the country turns the channel during TV commercials, and millions of us have ad-blockers on our Internet browsers. We can still be swayed, sure, but advertising has never had the effect that these companies would like to believe.

So, advertisers are scrambling to "regain" an audience they never had and, well, there's simply no need for the middleman. Not with targeted advertising online. The game has changed -- it'll never come back, at least not that way.

There will be a way to make money off online advertising someday. Hopefully, someday soon. But newspapers and those who rely on advertising won't be able to rely on the same way as they have for the last 80 years. I think that's been proven out in the last decade.

That's why the advertisers aren't "following" us online. There's simply no need to pay what they pay at print rates, because they shouldn't have been paying that much in the first place. They know it, we know it. It's gotta change.