• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, August 20, 2008

The Newspaper Association of America is replacing two conferences-- Nexpo and the NAA Marketing Conference--with a new annual event named the NAA mediaXchange, the industry organization announced Tuesday. The inaugural mediaXchange will take place March 9-11, 2009, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, according to Editor & Publisher, which first reported the news.

The new annual conference will focus on strategies and solutions for digital, interactive content and advertising, reflecting the crucial role of the Internet and mobile platforms for newspaper publishers. It will include a trade show where technology vendors can display their goods and services more fully than they could at the NAA Marketing Conference.

The show's mission of helping newspaper publishers increase their revenues from digital platforms is especially urgent, as newspapers' print advertising revenue continues to plummet. In the first quarter of 2008, total print revenues fell 14.38% to $8.4 billion, according to the NAA (second-quarter figures are not yet available). Even worse, most major newspaper publishers' online revenues are growing more slowly than they had hoped, and in some cases are even declining from year to year. In large part, that's because publishers relied heavily on online upsells from their print classified listings, which are now in free fall.