• by John Gaffney , September 9, 2002

Down To Zero: Merrill Lynch. Zenith Optimedia. The Publisher’s Information Bureau. Line ‘em all up, put all their prognostications out on the same day and you still can’t find the right combination of numbers that will indicate any kind of overall ad recovery. Accept it. This year will hit the books as a rough repeat of 2001 and 2001 sucked. However, it seems to me there are too many pockets of success in the ad business to believe this is just a bad hand of cards we’re playing. I talk to agency execs who say there’s business to be had and they’re getting it. I see magazines like Rosie, American Baby and FHM tearing up the track in the print field. I see Univision clocking double digit growth. If you’re focused on a bad economy maybe you need to change focus. Finding the right content and the right audience still seems to work in the ad business. Maybe we all have to work harder to find it.

Mrs. Bushisms: I don’t know about you, but when Laura Bush tells me and my kids to stay from TV on Wednesday, I wanna find the nearest SpongeBob marathon and plop everyone on the couch for a solid eight hours. She told CNN: “Don't let your children see the images, especially on Sept. 11, when you know it'll probably be on television again and again -- the plane hitting the building or the buildings falling.” First Tom Ridge becomes my travel planner, now Laura Bush is the nation’s media advisor? Not.

Content, Content, Content: The best way to cure any readership problems the newspaper business has is by old fashioned great reporting. The LA Times investigation of the shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur is a legit news story followed by stellar reporting. And in Hartford, CT, the Hartford-Courant reporter Eric Rich of The Hartford Courant found Rev. Laurence F.X. Brett, a priest accused of being a pedophile, after law enforcement agencies had been looking for years. That’s where newspapers will beat TV anywhere, anytime.