The Agenda

The Providence Journal reported yesterday (on its news blog that Belo Corporation, parent company of ProJo and such closely related companies as Texas Cable News, KONG-TV Seattle, and The Dallas Morning News, saw its first quarter profits decline compared to 1Q06. Belo earned a mere $15.5 million last quarter, due in large part “to weakness in newspaper advertising”—this despite the fact that “people still read newspapers.”

Yeah, our ads haven’t been selling too well either. Apparently the same “soft newspaper advertising conditions” which have plagued The Agenda (our first quarter revenues of approximately $0.0m were far below early estimates) have had an impact on our larger neighbors as well.

Ashley Mercado, The Agenda’s publisher, pointed out in January that “when Internet readership is counted – ‘the newspaper audience is actually way up.’” Perhaps the problem is with our publications’ web strategies: The Agenda don’t need no fucking strategy, while the Journal’s seems based on the idea that forcing people to register before reading most of their articles—and thus, looking at most of their ads—will somehow, by some process apparently understood only by those with advanced degrees in Journalism, increase ad revenues.

Yeah. Good luck with that.