Death of an ad salesman

I've commented before on figures that show falling adsales for newspapers and how some think that means the end of the industry. Figures from this week show that advertising sales are continuing to fall.

I've never really understood why so much emphasis is placed on advertising in the newspaper business model - alright I know why, I just think that the emphasis is misplaced. On a very basic level it makes up for all the times as a journalist I was told by ad salesmen that they "pay my wages" with a superior air. All my spluttering anger trying to justify that it was my fantastic words that sold the paper or magazine are now coming back to haunt them.

Because if anything is proven by the downward spiral of ad revenues it is that content matters.

Papers aren't precious, but journalists and other content creators are. It is time for publishers to realise that there's nothing wrong with the reading public, just the publishers' business model.

While ad revenues drop for newspapers, the picture is different for business to business magazines. However, there aren't many media correspondents or pundits that focus much attention on the b2b number sector. In fact, the number of new magazines remains stable with a slight increase. While ad revenue is falling, b2b magazines are actually increasing revenues when you include online, trade shows and other spin-offs.

To underline: yes, paper editions may soon be lining the bottom of the budgie's cage. However, the content lives on is RSS feeds, on blogs, in databases, on social bookmarking sites.

Now who's paying whose wages?