Dear National News Media:I just thought I’d write you a letter to let you know how disappointed I am in your coverage of world events. Ten years ago, I would have taken the word of CNN or The New York Times as gospel. These days, I’m a lot more skeptical.

Being Seana Mulcahy from Boston, I feel it’s my duty to spread a wee bit or Irish cheer to you today. I have to say today is a weird one. The Net is clad with open-ended headlines as Bush is due to make a statement about next steps in the potential war. The weekend news spills over to anti-war protests around the nation. I only heard two bits of news that seemed optimistic. One pertaining to our industry and one pertaining to the East Coast.

I know that we have had some bad times, but sometimes the press gets a little crazy. Google announces a new program featuring content–targeted ads. People suddenly become aware of a two-year old program from Primedia’s About.com called Sprinks, treating it as if it were a copycat of the Google program. I got more calls on this topic this week from the press than I have on any topic in months.

Last week I broached the subject of being able to target advertising at the kinds of behaviors and states of mind that advertisers have always actually been after, rather than the continued and insufficient use of demographics as a proxy for those behaviors and states of mind. As promised, this week, we are continuing that conversation.

There are definitely a number of agencies looking to hire these days (yours truly being one of them), which is a very good sign, but I’ve noticed that there is a much lower supply of candidates to choose from than in years past.

One of the best things about my job is being in an environment with full service creative (online and offline) being under one roof. One of the worst things about my job is dealing with other people's creative. I'd like to offer tips on how I deal with it then throw a question or two your way.

In a rather quiet announcement last week, Interep Interactive announced that they are beginning new billing procedures introducing “all electronic invoicing and electronic tearsheets for all invoices.” It has always been amazing to me that the media and marketing business is so antiquated when it come to computerization. We need more of what Interep is doing from the industry.

Why not try our best to target messages for products and services based on behavior rather than demographics?

I was feeling a little nostalgic after sitting on a plane the other day and was reminiscing about how much things have changed over the last few years, so I thought a little light-heartedness in the middle of your week would be acceptable.

If there’s one positive thing you can say about the evolution of direct response advertising on the web, it’s that we’ve stopped throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks.