• Ad Age, Monday, June 5, 2006 11:15 AM

A new mantra of "how local can you go?" could herald a comeback for newspapers as they go through the stormy transition to the Internet, writes Randall Rothenberg in Ad Age. He talks to DotConnect Media, a network of more than 1,500 newspaper Web sites purchased in March by Lee Enterprises with the hope of building a national advertising medium out of the conglomeration of local products. "Broadcast media always had the advantage, because they could communicate instantaneously to a national marketplace," says David Teitler, head of DotConnect. "Yet people trust newspapers. That's newspapers' killer app. Everyone from Procter to GM wants to get local, because that's where the sales take place." While Rothenberg comments that Teitler's "faith might seem suicidally counterintuitive," DotConnect believes that with a hosted network so large and an extranet allowing other newspapers in, it can "normalize ad buying across markets as divergent as New York and Knoxville."

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