Wrong End of the Hockey Stick

The Newspaper Association of America just published the Q1 2009 print ad sales results for the industry and boy are they ugly.  Nothing like a deep recession combined with being in an out of date business model to create the perfect storm.  That’s a 29.7% drop in sales ($2.6b) following six (count ‘em, six) consecutive quarters of double digit declines!  Yikes.  

And on top of that, the Classified business is even worse, declining a whopping 42% down to $1.5b - which is off from $4b in 2002.  

It’s been fascinating to watch an industry slowly die.  Since the mid ’90s everyone saw this trend and knew that media as we knew it was going to die.  But the Innovator’s Dilemma continues to play itself out.  Newspapers as we know them today - fueled by classified advertising and print ads - will join muskets, photo film, sailing ships, and typewriters in the history books.  And society will be all the better.  Unfortunately the collateral damage will be ugly as our friends and colleagues who perform wonderfully at their job will lose out as their industry dies off.