$20 billion is a lot of money, except when compared to $60 billion.

This, too: "The decline in newspaper ad revenues to a 60-year low is amazing by itself, but the sharp decline in recent years is pretty stunning.  Last year's ad revenues of about $21 billion were less than half of the $46 billion spent just four years ago in 2007."

Thnx to JS for the pointer.

Comments

[justcorbly]

Being in a cynical mood lately, I wonder how much of that deline in print ad revenue can be attributed to competition on the web, and how much of it can be attributed to a real downturn in interest in what I would call "real news".

On the other hand, how much overlap exists, say, between BBC followers on Twitter and Kim Kardashian followers on Twitter. I don't think Kim's Twitter feed has been a siren that's lured news junkies away from the hard stuff.

[Ed Cone]

I don't think the appetite for real news has declined -- the hard stuff is out there in more ways than ever.

It's the business model -- the venue for the ads -- that has been changed by the net. Advertisers always subsidized the news pages via the other sections, and the net has eaten those sections.

[Triadwatch]

And it should be even less than that with the outdated public notice taxpayer funded monopoly the paid papers have control of all over the country

[James]

@Triadwatch. Good point. Public notice practices today have to be considered bizarre by any standard except the standard of inertia.

[Account Deleted]

So much related to our republic and good government are at stake here it is hard to know where to start. Can we depend on bloggers and citizen journalists giving effort without thought to pay to serve the critical watchdog role? And how long can non-profits remain independent before they run afoul of their supporters/donors?

What's left are well funded corporate and political sock puppets to push their agenda without concern for truth.