[Plasma Shield]

Recent data released by the Newspaper Association of America show that advertising revenue in 2007 fell from about 46 Billion to 42 billion a loss of 9.4% and 4 billion dollars. This is huge.

the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.

NAA Reveals Biggest Ad Revenue Plunge in More Than 50 Years >> Editor and Publisher

This reduction is another indicator pointing to the growing move to online media for content and advertisements. The second worst reduction in revenue of the industry was only 6 years ago in 2001, a fall of about 9%. Losses were experienced across print advertisement, national print advertising revenue dropped 6.7% to $7 billion last year, retail slipped 5% to $21 billion, classified plunged 16.5% to $14.1 billion.

Even with the near-term challenges posed to print media by a more fragmented information environment and the economic headwinds facing all advertising media, newspapers publishers are continuing to drive strong revenue growth from their increasingly robust Web platforms

John Sturm(Sturm’s a pretty cool name, “sturmarbeiter” is stormtrooper in german), president and CEO of the NAA, said in a statement.

Personally, I still like newspapers, there’s just something about reading the newspapers, the feel and the texture that you get when you hold it in your hand. Not to mention the ability to roll it up and hit people with it. That said, the convenience and dynamic format of online newspapers totally out weights the said advantages. I mean, you can’t link to youtube or other newspapers in a paper newspaper, you can’t type a comment in and have people be able to read it instantly, and you can’t send people links to a article in a (paper) news paper, the closest thing to that is folding the piece of paper with the article on it into a plane and throw it at the person you want to give it to. The most important thing that online newspapers has got going for them is that most of them are free. The two dollars or so you pay is pretty cheap already, but not as cheap as free. (more…)