Conrad Fink, a professor of newspaper strategy and management in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, commented in a San Francisco Chronicle story about the top three newspaper publishers banding together to sell ads.
“I would prefer to see an industry-wide collaborative effort,” he said. The newspaper industry “has always struggled with an effort to develop compatible systems, compatible ad specifications and so forth. We have suffered as a result.”
By contrast, he said, “Television is one buy, one deal, one commercial. (Advertisers) try to do business with newspapers as a group, and they’re dealing with scores of different specifications and attitudes and approaches.”