• by John Gaffney , August 13, 2002

Last week’s Nielsen report showed an eight percent bounce for newspapers for the first half of the year, easily outpacing other media. Don’t expect the same high-flying numbers when the Newspaper Association of America issues its report sometime in the next few days.

“Our numbers are not in sync with Nielsen’s,” said NAA VP for business analysis and research Jim Conaghan. “There is a recovery underway form last year. Some categories such as automotive dealers and real estate are performing well. As the economy recovers newspapers are recovering, too. But the improvement is nowhere near Nielsen’s estimates.”

Conaghan has been in touch, he says, with the Nielsen researchers. He does not doubt the validity of its research. NAA will issue its second quarter and first half revenue for its member companies “over the next few days,” according to Conaghan.

Regardless of the discrepancy between Nielsen’s revenue estimates and the NAA’s, the newspaper category is seeing a slow but steady ad improvement. The New York Times reported improving ad conditions for all of its divisions today, a did recent reports from the Tribune company. Conaghan says recent publicity about newspaper readership shrinking and irrelevant ad propositions are unfounded. The best evidence of that, he says, is in the upturn.

“This is not a broken business model we’re talking about here,” he said. “This is part of a cyclical recovery. Newspapers reflect the upturns and downturns of the economy. We’re very much looking forward to next year, when we believe you’ll see a return to a normal economic growth pattern.”