Dr Joe's Printing Industry Blog

Margie Dana of the Boston Print Buyers has posted her "Print Tips" archives
http://www.bostonprintbuyers.com/printtips-archives.html

The NYTimes staff is probably upset that its owner said this!
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/822775.html
"I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either," he says.
Oh yes, and the Internet is not affecting the use of printing.... please, someone tell the Sulzbergers and their staffers.

Newspapers outside North America and Europe are doing well
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/060207/world_association_of_newspapers_booming_circulation
Of course, it's a low base... these newspapers are starting off really low. But increased incomes and prosperity increases the use of media overall. Remember, many of these countries also have low broadband penetration. Since newspapers in many countries also had low advertising revenues (there was nothing to advertise because they were undeveloped countries) this will increase as well. It will be quite interesting to see how print and Internet are jointly developed rather than having the Internet be a displacement medium.

Print media that are shifting over to the Internet have often realized that they are on the outskirts of the broadcast media.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6415922.html?display=Breaking+News
Local online video advertising is shaping into a battle between traditional print and television news providers, according to a new report from Borrell Associates. The growing advertising category has benefited publishers and broadcasters moving online, but initially has been embraced much more quickly by print. In 2006 newspapers sold approximately $81 million in local online video commercials in comparison to $32 million sold by TV broadcasters.

The economy is collapsing because we don't save enough. As usual, the Associated Press does little to inform its readers. IRAs, 401k and pension plan capital gains, and interest, are excluded from the calculation. The same holds true for increases in the value of real estate.
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/02/04/news/business/45-savings.txt
Here's an ominous quote:
During the Depression, when as many as one in four people were out of work, households were exhausting savings in order to pay the rent and buy food.
I suspect the Depression was a slightly different time than we have today. The report goes on to discuss how hard it is for young people to make ends meet. Of course it is... they're young! The have little job experience. The have comparatively low education because... they're young! The assumption is that all dollars are just consumed, but that's not true. If I earn $30,000, but I buy a house that costs $100,000, as far as the savings calculation goes, I have overpaid by -$70,000. Yet the purchase of an asset is treated as it was a latte or a beer. The same goes for me if I am young and have borrowed to go to college. A college education nets, on average, on an inflation-adjusted basis, an additional $1,000,000 over a lifetime, in earnings. But no, if I spend $120,000 on college, it might as well be a hot dog or a taco. How the press can continue this economic reporting malpractice is beyond me. Luckily, I saw a few more stories about how bad the savings rate data are this time around, but they are still few and far between.
The most important measure? The Federal Reserve's calculation of household wealth. It set another record recently. Declines in housing were offset by rises in asset values of.... you guessed it... savings in stocks, bonds, and other instruments.

Sun sponsored a panel of college students about how they use technology
http://news.com.com/College+students+find+existence+online/2100-1025-6157405.html?part=dht&tag=nl.e703
Despite the fears that kids are leaving permanent digital footprints when they post personal information online, college students think it would be even weirder if someone didn't exist on the Web.

Nice commentary from Clickability about how new technology in publishing needs buy-in from publishers, advertisers, and readers, and often the readers are the ones most overlooked. The main lesson is to avoid replicating the older medium attempting to be replaced.
http://www.clickability.com/press/eap/5549046.html
I overhead someone at a conference recently describing the Zinio approach as "like pointing a tv camera at a radio," and I think that pretty well sums up the problem.

Someone... please tell these folks that the Internet is not having any effect on print!
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/02/07/most_advertisers_now_spending_on_new_media_survey/
Nearly 90 percent of all U.S. companies polled in a new study will use part of their marketing budgets to advertise in new media like video games or virtual communities.
The survey by the American Advertising Federation underscores the shift in advertising spending away from television, magazines and, particularly, newspapers, which have suffered badly from declining circulation as more media choices have become available.
Concluding that "traditionally staid media categories are in need of innovation if they are to remain competitive," the study found that 73 percent of the executives interviewed planned to spend up to one-fifth of their budgets on new media.
More than 12 percent of respondents said they would spend as much as 40 percent of their budget on experimentation and new media, according to the survey released this week, which polled nearly 1,000 advertising executives.

We spend more than 3500 hours a year consuming media
http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2007-02-06-voa28.cfm

Kodak has announced that it has plans to lay off another 5000-7000 workers. This is why their ranting old man lunatic executive YouTube video is such poor strategy. Every time they want to talk about the "new Kodak" something like this is announced. When I heard the story about the layoffs, I thought of the line from the now-edited graphic division version... now adapted for this news "think of this as a big fat makeready for the 2010s." What's really hard is when you are working in a division that is doing well and all of the bad news is coming from other divisions. It's not like you can control them. It's one of the fallacies about "conglomerates" being stronger companies, when historically, they underperform, and the diverse businesses do not limit risk but actually increase it because none of them have the full range of resources they need for long term investments.
I've spent parts of four decades in marketing, teaching it, and doing it, and it still is fascinating how "inside-out" thinking pervades marketing and advertising, and that "outside-in" does not. The difference is discussed by Trout and Ries in their book, Positioning, long since updated by Jack Trout since Al Ries has gone on his own a few years ago. The worst advertising campaign I have seen this year is the one where they brought Orville Redenbacher back. I blogged about that on 1/22. http://drjoewebb.blogspot.com/2007/01/yahoo-and-newspapers-new-rules-of-pr.html
Kodak layoff http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/kodak-ups-estimates-job-cuts/story.aspx?guid=%7B2B5147F5%2D59E1%2D419C%2D8552%2DA942DEE633DB%7D&siteid=yhoo&dist=yhoo
Kodak's YouTube video has been viewed more than 200,000 times... this is the consumer division video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Sz6XjXu-oT8

Speaking of YouTube, 7 of its top 10 videos for a few days were Super Bowl ads. Advertising Age had a story about how advertisers are not taking full advantage of the post-event buzz.
http://adage.com/article?article_id=114893
My favorite ads from this year's Super Bowl?
Blockbuster http://www.superbowl-ads.com/2007/2007_winners/blockbuster_mouse.htm only because I'm a part-time computer geek.
eTrade http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whxc9to-1qs I really miss their "money out the wazoo" ad from years ago, but luckily, it's on YouTube http://youtube.com/watch?v=E0_tfoTTGOQ
Sprint http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNT1Y2sLLKU&NR "connectile dysfunction"
My favorite all-time Super Bowl ad is FedEx' sendup of the movie Castaway http://youtube.com/watch?v=XvX7ovvf-LI

The $100 laptop program has addressed security issues in a unique way... and they are discussed in this article
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=20&tag=nl.e539