Is advertising dead?

There will always be a need to market yourself, your business, etc. Whether or not the traditional model of putting an ad in the paper, or a classified ad, survives is a big question mark ... I think it will survive in small towns far longer than the big metros, but who knows...

Again, the buffoons who run newspapers (like our chain) run off good sales people because they are so cheap and refuse to pay them well (or make it impossible to make a decent commission) and hire amateurs who are nice and dress well but just don't know how to sell stuff. (kind of like hiring a sports editor with no experience for $8 an hour) ... We ran off two of our best sales people last year and they ate us for lunch when they started working for other local publications. Dumb, dumb, dumb...

 

LIAR!

I don't even OWN a microwave!

 

While I am not ready to pronounce advertising dead, the trend with auto dealers is only going to add more fuel to the fire. GM is poised to close scads of dealerships, and that certainly can't be good for newspapers.

 

Advertising's cyclical. Always has been. Print advertising, however, and especially broad-spectrum general interest newspaper advertising, may well be on the ropes.
For most companies, there are just so many better ways now to get your message in front of the relevant eyeballs, be it through your website or online ads, cable tv (what Daemon said above is right on about niche cable networks) or niche and trade pubs.
My dad runs a small advertising agency in a big city, and he's pretty much given up on advertising in the metro daily. He steers all his clients who still want print to the local business journal, which has 1/10th the circulation but hits the customers they want.
Throw in the consolidation of department stores and cell phone companies, the devouring of classifieds by websites and the incredibly-shrinking auto industry and we (general-interest journalism folk) have got to find another way to get paid, posthaste. Subscription-model, anyone?