Off the Cliff

If you haven't seen them, Editor & Publisher has the latest Newspaper Association of America numbers on newspaper ad revenue, and they're pretty heinous: Down a total of 9.4 percent in 2007, with Classifieds down a whopping 16.5 percent. And most of that happened before the economy started going south. Compared to 2008, 2007 was supposed to be a good year. Well, not so much.

A full scan of six decades of this data show only one dropoff like this, in 2001, when newspapers were hit by the triple-whammy of the bursting of the Internet bubble (bad for ads, especially employment classifieds), the resulting stock market plunge, and 9/11. Eventually, the business recovered a bit. This time, though, that ain't going to happen.

Good news, sort of: Newspaper online revenue went up almost 19 percent. But that was off from (admittedly unsustainable) 31 percent increases each of the previous two years, and of course, online revenue is still a drop in the bucket (7.5 percent of total revenue).

Hang on, folks. The ride gets even bumpier from here.