Newspapers Starting to Learn the Internet Game
For the past 15 years I’ve heard many prognosticators predict the death of newspapers. News to the prognosticators, they haven’t died yet and may be getting stronger. The media industry is getting stronger and the reach is growing.
Here’s the reason. Take a pair of sneakers for example. A pair of sneakers that costs $120 today cost $40 a mere 25 years ago. However, the labor for that pair of sneakers and the materials for that pair of sneakers has not gone up proportionately. Instead as a unit, labor and material costs have gone down. Jobs and labor costs have moved to third world countries and the cost of labor in China and India is cheaper today than it was in the United States 35 years ago. So why has the price gone up? It’s simple, the marketing and advertising costs of like products have gone up 10-fold over the past 30 years. That’s not only true for sneakers but it’s also true for golf clubs, automobiles, golf clubs, fashion clothing and many of the products that we use each and every day.
These marketing and advertising reveneues are easily being absorbed by cable tv and internet properties that didn’t exists a mere 20 years ago. For the newspapers that are understanding this, their web advertising revenues are up significantly.
