Tuesday, November 28, 2006
NAA Hides Downturn in Newspaper Online Ad Revenue in Plain Sight; American Business Media Almost Gets It Exactly Right; PDF Alternatives
The news media made much of the NAA's press release
http://www.naa.org/sitecore/content/Global/PressCenter/2006/ONLINE-NEWSPAPER-ADVERTISING-REPORTS-TENTH-CONSECUTIVE-QUARTER-OF-DOUBLE-DIGIT-INCREASES.aspx?lg=naaorg
that said how strong newspaper Internet revenues are. Unsaid in the release, but on their site http://www.naa.org/trends-and-numbers/market-databank/quarterly-newspaper-advertising-expenditures.aspx is the real data. Online ad revenues actually DROPPED from $667 million to $638 million. Before that gets blamed on seasonality (July and Aug are typically slow in newspapers), this is the first time that there has been any quarter-to-quarter decline EVER since they started measuring it.
The trade association American Business Media has published as small booklet "The Business Media Proposition. It was announced in a press release a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.americanbusinessmedia.com/abm/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=337&SnID=1988050364
I can't help but compare it to the Print Council (www.theprintcouncil.org and not www.printcouncil.org, as we well know) brochure issued at GraphExpo. The difference is night and day. I'll just accentuate the positive: the ABM's booklet is concise, informative and speaks communicators' language. It is almost totally objective. A business person, new or experienced, can get something out of reading it. Most of all, it explains why and how different media work together, as it recognizes that the business communications market is far different than it used to be. It's a fine job, and well worth emulating, not just for the printing industry, but for many industries.
One thing not to emulate is that the booket is $10 on their e-store. First, the store is incredibly hard to find on their site, so here's the link: http://www.e2e-store.com/abmstore/index.cgi?member
Second, there should be a downloadable PDF of such a fine effort. The idea is to infect minds with these ideas, I would think, especially when this is so well done. They're missing the opportunity to reach a much larger audience by not having such an excellent promo piece like this online. I've written to them asking for a link to one, and will post it if they decide to do so.
Sure, I say that Office2007 might be the last of its kind... and the WSJ says that Vista might be the last rollout of its kind...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116459728069433263.html?mod=hps_us_inside_today
Tired of the length of time it takes for Acrobat Reader or Acrobat itself takes to open a PDF or a PDF web page? Jump over to FoxIt Reader. It's stunningly fast and quite good http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
I'm a big fan of making PDFs with OpenOffice, but you of course need other programs that don't have built-in PDF capabilities. PDF Creator does a great job http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pdfcreator/PDFCreator-0_9_3_GPLGhostscript.exe?modtime=1156491273&big_mirror=0
http://www.naa.org/sitecore/content/Global/PressCenter/2006/ONLINE-NEWSPAPER-ADVERTISING-REPORTS-TENTH-CONSECUTIVE-QUARTER-OF-DOUBLE-DIGIT-INCREASES.aspx?lg=naaorg
that said how strong newspaper Internet revenues are. Unsaid in the release, but on their site http://www.naa.org/trends-and-numbers/market-databank/quarterly-newspaper-advertising-expenditures.aspx is the real data. Online ad revenues actually DROPPED from $667 million to $638 million. Before that gets blamed on seasonality (July and Aug are typically slow in newspapers), this is the first time that there has been any quarter-to-quarter decline EVER since they started measuring it.
The trade association American Business Media has published as small booklet "The Business Media Proposition. It was announced in a press release a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.americanbusinessmedia.com/abm/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=337&SnID=1988050364
I can't help but compare it to the Print Council (www.theprintcouncil.org and not www.printcouncil.org, as we well know) brochure issued at GraphExpo. The difference is night and day. I'll just accentuate the positive: the ABM's booklet is concise, informative and speaks communicators' language. It is almost totally objective. A business person, new or experienced, can get something out of reading it. Most of all, it explains why and how different media work together, as it recognizes that the business communications market is far different than it used to be. It's a fine job, and well worth emulating, not just for the printing industry, but for many industries.
One thing not to emulate is that the booket is $10 on their e-store. First, the store is incredibly hard to find on their site, so here's the link: http://www.e2e-store.com/abmstore/index.cgi?member
Second, there should be a downloadable PDF of such a fine effort. The idea is to infect minds with these ideas, I would think, especially when this is so well done. They're missing the opportunity to reach a much larger audience by not having such an excellent promo piece like this online. I've written to them asking for a link to one, and will post it if they decide to do so.
Sure, I say that Office2007 might be the last of its kind... and the WSJ says that Vista might be the last rollout of its kind...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116459728069433263.html?mod=hps_us_inside_today
Tired of the length of time it takes for Acrobat Reader or Acrobat itself takes to open a PDF or a PDF web page? Jump over to FoxIt Reader. It's stunningly fast and quite good http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
I'm a big fan of making PDFs with OpenOffice, but you of course need other programs that don't have built-in PDF capabilities. PDF Creator does a great job http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pdfcreator/PDFCreator-0_9_3_GPLGhostscript.exe?modtime=1156491273&big_mirror=0
