It’s been a long time coming ladies and gentlemen.  The newsprint companies are beginning to shift from squirming from thethought of changing with technology to floundering as they suffocate from the lack of water… err, I mean, revenue.

If the sleek and slim, narrower new look of your favorite newspaper has made you smile at the thought of them growing an environmental conscience, I’ll burst your bubble now.  Newspaper companies aren’t going green.  They’re going BROKE.  Very few people realized the push late last summer and fall for a Washington bailout of newspaper companies.  Yep, they too have jumped on the bandwagon.  Check out Reuters.com and TheHill.com for more info on that.  This whole, “newspapers are a staple of American society” argument is crap.  Timely and accurate news reporting is a staple of American society.  Not the fact that it’s printed on cheap paper with ink that gets all over your dress shirt.  Heck, I’m glad people realized that timely and affordable transportation was more important than keeping all of the buggie manufacturers from changing their business, or we’d still be scheduling a stage coach instead of hailing a cab.

Though some newsprint companies such as the Houston Chronicle have dared to dabble in the world of Internet marketing in order to evolve with the people that feed them, most have stood firm.  Years of being admired and controlling entities in their communities have emboldened many newsprint organizations with the foolishness to forget that though they may influence local perception for a while, ultimately, the people they serve will decide where they will turn for information.  Slow to grow is now causing many of the once prestigious companies to grasp at any hope of revenue.

In an effort to continue the old world way of requiring the reader pay to hear the news, the New York Times announced yesterday a plan for charging frequent readers of their website.  I can’t wait to pay a fee to surf through the NYT site rather than simply conducting a search on Google!  Whatever.  Hey NYT, how about this novel idea, instead of charging me to read your crap, write something that will cause me to come back tomorrow along with all of my friends that I forwarded your link to, give away some papers or market yourselves on the web in such a way to build traffic to your site (free to the user traffic).  Then, when enough people are coming to your site on a regular basis, charge advertisers for the opportunity to appear in front of your audience.  I know, I know… it sounds weird but believe it or not, that’s how thousands of people across America do to make their living every day.  You might have one problem though.  The web produces completely transparent and track-able results for advertisers, so, you’d have to deliver something worth while if you took that approach.  Since you’re highly unlikely to produce a product that will cause a substantial gain in your site’s usage, I’d suggest you go ahead and gouge the few loyal readers you have left until you drive all of them off and ask for more government money or go away.

Oh, and about that going green thing.  So much for Obama pushing for “green” companies.  What industry is more damaging to our environment than the one that makes its profit by distributing more heavy stacks of paper that need be wrapped in plastic and flown or trucked to every corner f the country using trees, ink, petroleum products for plastics, diesel & jet fuels.  All so that the majority of their product can end up back in a landfill without even being read.  And don’t tell me it’s being read.  If it were, the companies doing this, wouldn’t be going broke.

Frito Lays, parent company of soft drink giant, Pepsi announced it will pull 2010 SuperBowl Ads after a 23 year run in order to do what?  Focus on web based marketing.  That’s right.  You always wanted to market your business where all the big boys were, well now you can.

Great thing is, that unlike a SuperBowl Ad, web marketing is completely scalable to your target market, budget, and geographic target.  Plus, chances are, your company can maneuver positioning easier than the global giants giving the little guys the advantage.

You can check out more about it here:  http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4751415