Media Advertising Revenues: It's not Craig's Fault

So was it or was it not Craig Newmark's fault that advertising revenues went down the drain for the entire media industry? In addition to being extreme, this is also simply untrue according to Columbia Journalism Review's Steven S. Ross. In "Craigslist=Straw Man," Ross states that newspapers actually have been keeping up perfectly fine, and it is primarily economic downturns that are causing problems. He also points out that web readers seem to be keeping papers out of the red, despite the drastic fall in print readership. "Craigslist is a straw man. It is the ups and downs of the economy that truly affect advertising, and so far they've been resiliant," he states. So why all the glom and doom predictions if this is the case? One concern lies in the fact that though online publications maintain substantial readership, it is still unclear just how the advertising procedure will function for online publication. Will companies pay significant enough sums for banner ads, etc to keep the entire industry afloat when we subtract out the enormous chunk of the print end of things? Also, online "news packages" require a whole lot more manpower and reporters to put together (think not just writer and photographer, but also video person, audio person, "data guru" and design people for interactive graphs and page layout). Though backpack journalists are giving it the old college try, it seems crazy to think one person can truly put together such a package by oneself, especially at the faster-than-lightning speeds the internet now demands of news output. Only time will tell what becomes of journalism as we know it as the entire advertising structure gets rebuilt from the ground up.