Newspaper Roundup: At NAA, Newspaper Execs Tout New Media, As Print Struggles

With print ad revenues declining, publishers speaking at the annual Newspaper Association of America’s Mid-Year Media Review sought to highlight their rising digital ad revenue as print numbers continue to sink, according to Reuters. The two-day conference, aimed at analysts and investors, kicked off Tuesday in New York. More after the jump…

— As we reported last week, Media General’s May print ad revenues fell 14.9 percent, to $42 million from $48 million, while the interactive division posted a rise in May 2007 revenues of 43.1 percent to $2.8 million from $2 million the previous May. At Tuesday’s presentation, COO Reid Ashe told attendees: “For many things, the internet is now our primary medium.”

— On Monday, Journal Register: Total May 2007 ad revenues for the Yardley, PA. publisher of The New Haven Register and other papers, fell 11.5 percent to $29 million compared to $32.8 million compared to the year before. Meanwhile, online revenues were $1.5 million, a 22.1 percent gain over May 2006. The company’s websites had 4 million unique visitors generating 28.8 million pageviews in May, an increase of 16.2 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively, as compared to the prior year. Release During its NAA session on Tuesday, the company forecast a 4 percent to 5 percent fall in advertising revenue in 2007, with the expectation that online ad revenue to rise 30 percent.

Belo, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, offered a contrarian note, saying that the notion that print’s death has been greatly exaggerated. CEO Robert Decherd: “The newspaper business is going to settle out, one way or another.”

— Although not presenting until Wednesday morning, Lee Enterprises, the Davenport, Iowa-based publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other newspapers, issued its May figures on Monday: online ad revenue was up 60 percentin May to $5.3 million from $3.3 million year-over-year. In general, advertising revenue declined 1.7 percent to $73 million from $74.6 million, for the same period. Combined print and online classified revenue for the month was pretty much flat, coming in at $29.1 million from $29.2 million in May 2006. Lee’s claimed its websites attract more than 11 million visits per month. Lee expects June’s declines to be similar to May’s and April’s. Release

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