THERE was plenty of hand- wringing by newspaper executives about the future of their industry yesterday at the UBS Global Media Conference in Midtown Manhattan. In the last year, newspapers have cut jobs, their circulation has fallen and readers have continued to drift to the Internet and other nontraditional media.
But some of those executives saw promising news amid the gloom and doom. November advertising sales were up slightly, year over year, at several major newspapers. The Wall Street Journal reported ad linage was up 8.7 percent, and The New York Times announced that ad revenues rose 5.8 percent. Some stocks reacted to the news: Dow Jones & Company rose 3 percent, the Tribune Company climbed 2 percent, and The New York Times Company was up 3 percent.
Most newspaper executives were cheerful about their prospects, telling investors to expect modest growth in 2006. Executives at Gannett were particularly optimistic. "We expect Gannett will generate a record level of revenues this year, despite the challenging ad environment," said Craig A. Dubow, the president and chief executive of Gannett.
Roger Ogden, the president and chief executive of Gannett Broadcasting, said the company is looking to political campaigns for midterm elections and the 2006 Winter Olympics as significant streams of revenue, a statement echoed by others, including The New York Times.
Despite generally weak growth, several newspaper companies announced they would raise advertising rates for 2006. The Los Angeles Times, published by Tribune, is to increase advertising rates 3 to 6 percent in 2006. The New York Times said this week that it would raise advertising rates about 5 percent next year. At USA Today, which is published by Gannett, advertising rates are to increase about 6 percent.
Donald E. Graham, the chairman and chief executive of the Washington Post Company, said in a keynote address that the decline in print circulation and the growing migration of paid classified advertising to free Web sites like Craigslist are major problems facing the industry.
"If Internet advertising revenues don't continue to grow, I think the future of the newspaper industry will be very challenging," Mr. Graham said, adding that "Web ads work very, very well."
But whether Internet ads are effective or not, L. Gordon Crovitz, the president of Dow Jones's electronic publishing division, complained that current online ad rates are too low, saying advertisers have never before been able to reach a captive audience all day long with advertising messages.
"This to me is the biggest issue," Mr. Crovitz said. "I don't think any publisher has been getting fair value from advertisers."
He added, "I think the challenge for all of us, and we take on this responsibility, is to do the hard work that's necessary to keep informing advertisers of the value of online advertising."
But newspaper classified advertising continues to be threatened, with rapidly growing Web sites like Craigslist offering free classified listings.
Sue Clark-Johnson, the president of the Gannett newspaper division, defended newspapers' classified offerings, saying publications like USA Today have an added value that sites like Craigslist do not.
"We have what nobody else has in this space," she said. "We have service; we have contact; we have relationships with customers; we work with our customers very closely."
Newspaper executives also emphasized the need to integrate print editions of newspapers with online versions. Richard F. Zannino, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Dow Jones, displayed a mockup of The Wall Street Journal with a watermark reading "WSJ.com" over the standard newspaper logo.
In a departure from their usual political activities, members of the political organization MoveOn.org appeared at the conference and tried to confront Dennis J. FitzSimons, the chief executive of the Tribune Company. Representatives of the group demanded he reverse a decision this year to cut 650 employees from papers including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Orlando Sentinel. The group charged that such layoffs threaten the ability of newspapers to perform as public watchdogs.
Mr. FitzSimons declined to meet with a representative from the group.
