Newspapers And The Advent Of Blog Marketing

Sometime last year, I e-mailed an idea to Emmis Communications on how the could use blog marketing to upsell advertisers. The answer in a nutshell, was good idea, but we sell radio advertising.

What was it Julia Roberts said in Pretty Woman? Oh yeah. "You people work on commission, right? Big Mistake. Big. Huge."

The idea is simple. Radio Stations have already been passed by the internet as the place to spend money. Newspapers were losing ground rapidly, but it could be they are catching one. Their audience is growing online, even while their revenues are subscribers and stock prices are plummeting.

Call me crazy, but I think newspapers are going to get it. They already have, in the Direct Mail world. $1 billion in postage, and they are the biggest users in the local market for the US Postal Service.

Imagine what happens when newspaper begin to leverage their greatest asset - their advertisers, and begin to move into the online advertising world. And if they don't, well, the blog networks aren't getting any smaller.

If you want to discuss this idea, e-mail me and I'll give you the rest.