Advertising and classifieds are typically separate departments in most newspapers.
Advertising has competed with radio, TV, direct mail -- you name it -- for decades on decades.
What matters is that classifieds got gutted. That was the true river of gold.
Newspapers got a cut of thousands upon thousands of transactions every single week, whether or not those transactions even occurred. Every potential hiring, every name change, every car for sale, every house on the market, pretty much all of commerce from petty to grand: the newspaper gets its cut.
The income:cost ratio is fantastically high, especially since the cost of printing is subsidised (though not typically fully covered) by the cover price.
Advertising has competed with radio, TV, direct mail -- you name it -- for decades on decades.
What matters is that classifieds got gutted. That was the true river of gold.
Newspapers got a cut of thousands upon thousands of transactions every single week, whether or not those transactions even occurred. Every potential hiring, every name change, every car for sale, every house on the market, pretty much all of commerce from petty to grand: the newspaper gets its cut.
The income:cost ratio is fantastically high, especially since the cost of printing is subsidised (though not typically fully covered) by the cover price.