Editor and Publisher reports today that we’re all spectacularly screwed:
The newspaper industry has experienced the worst drop in advertising revenue in more than 50 years.
According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 — the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.
Folks, this is some of the worst –though not at all unexpected– news about our industry to date. How about we all take the weekend to dream up a big money-making epiphany?
I don’t think any big money making scheme will do the trick. It’ll take a lot of small innovations to get where we need to be.
Though that last line was mostly in jest, you raise an interesting point:
Innovation has historically happened in increments, contrary to popular belief. For instance, when you come up with a neat way to arrange photos online, you’re standing on the shoulders of thousands of innovations, right down to the screws in the camera used to take the photos and the mining techniques used to gather the metal for them. Even in Google’s case, there were plenty of folks building search engines before Larry and Sergey came along (check out “The Search”).
The important thing is to question the things we assume to be etched in stone. We must explore other industries, examine what’s going on outside the States, try to look at what we do with fresh eyes and keep doggedly working this situation until we can make something happen.
A recommendation: Take a gander at Scott Berkun’s “Myths of Innovation” (recently removed from the list at right). Really good stuff.