Newspaper industry leaders on the future

Don Day June 21st, 2007

The CEOs of McClatchy and Freedom Communications answered questions during the Newspaper Association of America’s Mid-Year Media Review earlier this week. Forbes writes up the discussion and hits a number of high points, including fragmentation, Google/Yahoo!, lower margins and how to approach Internet sales with advertisers. Freedom CEO Scott Flanders talked about the future of classified advertising:

“I think we as an industry need to look very hard at the free classified model because I think part of it is a critical-mass issue. As our pages of print classifieds get smaller and smaller, it becomes a slippery slope of relevance as to whether we’re going to have the reader referencing those pages. I think we may have to look through the other end of the telescope and develop a point of view that maybe it means we need to walk away from some of the traditional revenue sources [for the sake of audience aggregation].”