Newspaper Ad Revenue Now in Freefall

(MoneyWatch)  Can we have a moment of silence for the ink-stained wretches at newspapers? Via TechCrunch, the Newspaper Association of America put out its advertising numbers, and not only is print ad revenue continuing to decline ever more rapidly, but online ad spending is declinging as well. As Alan Mutter as Newsosaur puts it:

The record 14% sales plunge featured the first-ever drop in online sales. Interactive revenues slipped by 2.3% in the second quarter of this year to $776.6 million. For the entire first half, online sales rose a modest $35 million, or 2.3%, to a bit less than $1.6 billion.

Online has been seen by some as the savoir of newspapers, but plenty of others have cast a leery eye at this proposition. Over at Wired News, they suggest a way to staunch the bleeding may be plans like the Wall Street Journal's recently launched WSJ -- high-end glossy magazines filled with advertisements for high-end products.

Charles Layton at the American Journalism Review's had a paper up in June, "Bridging the Abyss: Why a lot of newspapers aren't going to survive," showing that online ad revenues would fail to compensate for the lack of print ad revenues. However, in Layton's paper, he assumed online revenues would be going up. If online ad revenues at papers continue to fall, look out.