Maven: Listen to Oracle

My heart aches for the fate of newspapers. But my mind aches still more at some of the coverage of their situation. Take this Reuters story on Wednesday's February revenue release from The New York Times (NYT), puh-leese.

"Internet ad revenue," it stated, "rose 14.3 percent in February on growth in display and classified advertising." Dudes, it rose in absolute terms. But of all the bad news for newspapers, the very worst is that Internet advertising revenue, the one hope for long-term salvation, is showing signs of slowing down on a sequential basis. If it is to save the day, this is way too early in the growth cycle for that. That is the operative issue.

The article also points out, rightly, that monthly numbers are just a "snapshot" but then goes on to say that Dallas Morning News publisher Belo(BLC) recently announced it would stop providing the data because they don't inform shareholders of meaningful patterns.

Reuters left it at that, but The Business Press Maven won't. It's never a good sign when companies start arguing against traditionally released data. Newspaper publishers had few problems with monthly numbers when they were good.

And this kicker, which was allowed to hang out there unchallenged, kicked The Business Press Maven right in the sweetbreads: "Lee and Gannett(GCI), which reported a drop in newspaper ad revenue last week, partly blamed the declines on bad weather."

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