Newspaper ad revenue down another 6% in 2012, but Google is not the reason

Image from Newsosaur

Image from Newsosaur

According to the Newspaper Association of America, advertising revenue dropped 6% in 2012. Total revenue was down 2% to an estimated $38.6 billion.*

That’s the doom-and-gloom story.

The one that’s not making any waves that I can see is this: the $3.4 billion in digital ads reported by NAA is more than the $2.6 billion in display ad revenue reported by Google last year.

However, over at Newsosaur, Alan D. Mutter compares newspaper ad revenue ($22.3 billion) to Google ad revenue, calling the disparity a “stunning reversal of fortune for the newspaper industry.”**

I think Mutter is waving a red herring.

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Seattle Times To Erect Paywall

Seattle Times executive editor David Boardman has announced that the paper will erect a paywall for non-print subscribers but provided no details. Part of the rationale:

Since The New York Times began charging for full access to its website two years ago, more than 400 daily newspapers across the country — including most in this state — now have digital subscriptions. Full, unrestricted access to their websites is no longer free.

The other part:

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More Federally Funded Research To Be Made Freely Accessible

open accessIn response to a We The People petition, the Obama White House has taken another step in the journey to provide open access to publicly-funded research.

Today the Office of Science and Technology directed all federal agencies that manage “more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication.”

The open-access movement is not restricted to the United States, but you could argue that we are not moving as quickly or as radically as other nations. For example, last summer United Kingdom Science Minister David Willetts accepted the recommendations of a task force on open access. The first recommendation (pdf)Continue reading

Is It About To Be Illegal To Unlock Your Cellphone?

techmeme screen capture

Techmeme Screen Capture

Remember, if it sounds too awful to be true, then 99.9% of the time … it’s not true. Or not completely true.

And that’s the case with this headline, which made its way ’round the net on Thursday. The story popped up in a Facebook conversation on a different subject. Then I wandered over to Techmeme, where I made this screen capture.

But there is a germ of truth in the headline.

Read on. Please.

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