Newspapers are drying up (Cops/Squeezer where you at)

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I would say that there will always be a certain newspaper that will have a following w/o the worries of failing.

In Philadelphia, we have what's called the "City Paper" and it is a weekly paper that covers everything and provides local classifieds, jobs, housing, for sale, personals, services, local community, events, and real estate,c overage of news, culture, ideas, music, arts, theater, movies and interviews with various people; even though it is a weekly publication, the demand is high for this rag.

I swear by it for restaurant reviews, movie reviews as well as movie locations. The bar/pub and concert listings are also great and cover every type of music being played all over the Tri-State area.

This is a paper I enjoy reading, that deals with my surrounding area. As for the big paper here in Philly called "The Inquirer". I never read it, don't care if it folds or not since they deal very little to anything on a local scale other than how many people died this day or that day from such and such accident or shooting...it's all just doom and gloom. The news they post can be found on any online source, be it CNN, BBC News, Fox, Washington Post online and so on.

The City paper is online http://www.citypaper.net/ and many big cities have their own similar paper as well. I however prefer reading this in paper format

The papers that will survive the in the future will be the ones that give people something to read and use as a guide for whatever local happenings may be of interest.

[ConcreteSchlyrd]

Not necessarily, advertisers call local papers and ask to advertise in their paper all the time. For an additional cost, you will include an advertisement in your online newscast. Let's say a hockey arena wants to advertise in the paper and they've agreed to pay an additional amount then all you need to do is get an image or logo of that company, throw it in photoshop and add contact information. Save the file, open it in finalcut. Grab some music and spend literally under 2 minutes making a basic advertisement.

You're over-simplifying it. First off, your "clients" first reaction is "that's not good enough" or "make it blink!" Then you have to spend time telling how much it costs for certain bells and whistles, or spend time telling them netiquette. No paper wants to do that (nor really has the time to do so), which is why they farm it out.

Whatever. I don't really care--it's not my business. I'm just telling you that advertisement (on the web) has a LOOOOOOONG way to go. It's not a simple matter, as people want to seem to boil it down to.

[Cops]

You're right, people are going to want better production value for their buck. I still think you can find a way of advertising business in a local community that is geared towards that local community. As long as you say, this is going to be more or less the same image you'd post in the paper except it will be seen for 5-10 seconds before an online newscast or news item then people can bitch but it won't change the fact that the piece won't look any different. Big companies might even have an advertisement that has been scripted, shot, and edited so all you have to do is attach it to your piece. Smaller papers with no affiliation need to do something, and reaching out to the local community is their best shot at staying afloat.

Also; If companies, such as a local brewery, or a local arena want a 30 second advertisement you can put them in contact with production groups that won't chagre them arm and a leg. Hell, if someone offered me $300 to create a 30 second advertisement I wouldn't turn it down. I think I'd deserve a lot more, but I generally don't turn down cash paid jobs. There are A LOT of people out there that try to make money this way. Canadian media is such a tight knit organization that chances are you're going to work with someone more than once. It's heavily a word of mouth industry. Broadcasters and Media professionals alike know at least five people who have started their own production company on the side to generate extra revenue. So the solution is simple, if you want a 'real' advertisement pass along several sites of Production groups. 9 times out of 10 those sites will contain a demo reel of things they've shot and edited. It's all about suggesting third parties to do something, which promotes growth in other areas of media. Besides a 2 minute job in Photoshop the news company won't turn into an advertising company.

edit; fucking long winded posts, anyways tell people this is what you get and this is what it costs. Spell it out for them, and if they pay you and get confused then that's their fault. Creating a document about online advertisements for local broadcasters would take all of a day to fine tune. As long as you make it clear of the costs and product then it really is up to the person or company to decide what advertisement they want and how they want to go about it.