Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

Great story in BusinessWeek about the decline of newspapers, at the hands of the Internet.

Some highlights:

"Consumers are shifting decisively to online information, says Fine (Merrill Lynch analyst), especially the young, and are no longer yoked to the local newspaper. ‘Ads are following the eyeballs to where they make transactional decisions.’ Fine recently forecast that newspapers’ profit margins are set to enter a long period of decline.

"The new and troubling reality for newspapers is that even if they excel as purveyors of information to appreciative audiences, they still face tough business terrain. ‘They can try to be the destination where you go online and [can] be really successful with citizen journalism and blogs,’ says Fine. But such innovations are ‘not going to pay a lot of bills.’"

… and my favorite line: "Newspapers are cockroaches (never die). But the Net’s starting to resemble Black Flag."

I’m continually amazed at how much money employers throw down the drain via newspaper advertising. And for what? I know a mid-sized hospital in a mid-sized market that spends upwards of $500,000 a year on newspaper advertising. Half a million dollars!

What’s worse, employers rarely have any kind of tracking mechanism. They almost never know their return-on-investment (ROI) for a newspaper ad (or any ad, actually). They just know "it works," it looked good, they’ve always done it this way … and they’re competition does it too.

You know how much remarkable, creative marketing you could do for $500,000 annually? A whole lot. You wouldn’t even need anywhere near half a mill’ for better results. I don’t shed one tear for the death of newspapers.

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