Over the last few days executives at Goldman Sachs’ Communicopia have talked about a stabilizing — or even improving — advertising market.

It’s not the only time they’ve talked about stabilization. It was the watchword of investors calls as far back as last spring. And it appears they were right. New figures out from TNS Media Intelligence show the advertising market wasn’t any worse in the second quarter than it was in the first.

That’s cold comfort considering the data show that advertising spending in the second quarter sank 13.9 percent from a year ago. For the first six months of 2009, spending is down some 14.3 percent from a year ago, or more than $10 billion in lost TV spots, print ads and radio jingles.

Here’s how TNS research guru Jon Swallen described it in a prepared statement:

While it’s tempting to interpret this as a positive indicator that things aren’t getting worse, the fact remains that the market has been steadily tracking at around 14 percent declines for several consecutive months and this represents billions of lost revenue. Early data from third quarter hint at possible improvements for some media due to easy comparisons against distressed levels of year ago expenditures.

The worst hit category for the first six months was automotive, with spending down 31 percent. Others that fared poorly (to nobody’s surprise) included financial services, down 24 percent; miscellaneous retail, down 18 percent; and travel & tourism, down 15 percent. Housing related advertising, which covers several categories, tumbled 29 percent.

And the prize for the worst media sector over the first six months goes to… radio. Spending on those pesky radio ads fell 24.6 percent, a touch more than newspapers at 24.2 percent.

But hey, at least the market isn’t getting worse.

Here’s a post from our San Francisco reporter Clare Baldwin:

Radio listeners are brooding as the world economy continues to falter, and American Public Media is rewriting its music to improve the mood.

Marketplace, American Public Media’s daily business and economics show, has rescored the music that accompanies “The Numbers” section of the program, which ticks off the ups and downs of the stock market.

The show plays “We’re in the Money” when the market is up and “Stormy Weather” when the market is down.

But there have been complaints that the Depression-era “We’re in the Money” is too upbeat a soundtrack to accompany the figures that signal disaster for so many investors.

In response, Marketplace commissioned Los Angeles-based composer Joe Matzzie to write a “more melancholy version of this ‘happy music’ in response to the historic drops in the markets and the current Great Recession.”

The new, slower music features a muted trumpet instead of a jazzy piano, and is meant to better reflect the macro economic situation.

“It’s still the ‘We’re in the Money’ song that reflects the fact that the markets went up, but it’s just a little bit less happy than the original song, because still, investors are feeling a pinch with the economy,” APM spokesman Brad Robideau said.

The opening panel at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual meet in Denver addressed an interesting question: Did 9,000 business journalists blow it when it came to ringing the alarm bells on the financial meltdown?

The five SABEW panelists — The New York Times’ business editor Larry Ingrassia, Columbia Journalism Review critic and former Wall Street Journal reporter Dean Starkman, personal finance columnist Jane Bryant Quinn, Emmy-winning former ABC News investigative reporter Allan Dodds Frank and Greg Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan — agreed that the financial press could have done more. Newspapers, wire services, magazines and television stations could have been more aggressive, and they could have taken more pains to explain why complex things like mortgage-backed securities might matter to the average reader.

But journalists can hardly be accused of “blowing it” when even doomsday pundits like Bob Shiller and Nouriel Roubini could predict only parts of the nightmare scenario that is unfolding in the U.S. economy right now, the panelists said.

CJR’s Starkman, who’s just completed a “deep dive” into the news coverage leading up to the financial crisis, said his report, which will be up for public consumption next month, found that the top journalism outlets didn’t do a good enough job of signalling that the tiny sparks in the housing and securities markets could flame up into a giant financial blaze.

“If the question is, did the business press provide adequate warnings to the public about the crisis, the answer is negative,” Starkman said. His 6,400-word report, which surveyed scores of articles in publications like the NYT, WSJ, Forbes, Fortune and others between January 2000 and June 2007, concludes that the investigative reporting started out strong but then downshifted to “good, but not sufficient,” as reporters wrote about the housing bubble and defective mortgage products, but failed to focus on the lenders.

The Times’ Ingrassia took issue with Starkman’s as-yet-unreleased report, rattling off a long list of stories his paper had done in the early years about ”predatory home equity loans (that) were being diced into mortgage-backed securities,” out-of-control mortgage markets and even excess executive pay. “I think the record shows that the press was there in laying the groundwork and ringing the alarm bell.” But, Ingrassia added, there was little more reporters could do if regulators didn’t heed the news and readers didn’t “seem receptive” to it.

Would politicians have done something to avert the crisis if people had cared more and pressed their legislators for better regulation? Which begs a further question — did reporters fail to write stories in a way that would make people sit up and take notice?

Maybe journalists couldn’t do more than they did. “The job of the press is most effective when it stirs people up so they can exert political pressure,” said Greg Miller, who teaches at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. But financial journalism has become much tougher to do in recent years, he added.

“There are no longer just investment bankers doing everything today,” Miller said. “Everyone’s a specialist. No one banker could explain the entire process of how securitization worked. So it’s asking an awful lot of journalists to break it down and explain when bankers don’t know.”

And if journalists do begin to understand how it all works, Miller said a further challenge is: “How do we make this simple enough for people who don’t spend their lives in this to understand?”

The panelists — and moderator Paul Steiger, a former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal who now runs the investigative journalism outfit ProPublica –all agreed that understanding the nuts and bolts of the housing and securities markets and how it all led to the meltdown is a tough call for reporters. But they did take journalists to task for not being enough of the curious skeptics they are supposed to be.

Dodds Frank blamed a “culture of reverence” that has crept up in financial journalism, especially in television outlets like CNBC, for contributing to a dearth of early-warning signals. “What has happened in broadcast journalism… where business is now glamorous but real analysis is switched out for the big-get CEO interview.” Softballing replaced hard-hitting questions, he added.

Journalists also drank the Kool Aid when it came to an unquestioning acceptance of deregulation and free markets that would self-correct as the right way forward for capitalism, said Jane Bryant Quinn. “It became very unfashionable to say we ought to regulate,” said Bryant Quinn, who writes columns for Bloomberg.com and Newsweek. “We drank the Kool Aid, saying free markets are the best, (but) we should have paid enough attention to where the regulatory authorities could fail.”

In the end, a member of the audience reframed the original question in the context of the journalism industry, giving it a darker pall: Did the press not do enough to get the public interested, and therefore the regulators to do nothing, and what does that say about the relevance of the journalistic enterprise? Quite a question to mull over as newspapers and other media struggle to find reasons to justify their existence.

Keep an eye on:

• Verizon and Apple are discussing the possible development of an iPhone for Verizon, with the goal of introducing it next year, people familiar with the situation tell USA Today (USA Today)

• The upfront haul for ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox will decrease 15 pct from the 2008 tally to about $7.7 billion, according to a projection by Barclays Capital (The Hollywood Reporter)

• The fast-shrinking newspaper business set a new standard for job insecurity in the last couple of weeks (NY Times)

(Photos: Reuters)

The latest by-product of the financial crisis? Media lawsuits. More specifically: Government agencies deny or fail to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by media organizations, which then sue to force the government to own up.

The two latest cases are from News Corp’s Fox Business Network and The New York Times (both outlets’ complaints are pasted below). Fox sued for what it said was the government’s failure to respond to a FOIA request, filed on February 26, 2009, which sought records relating to information that the Securities and Exchange Commission received regarding the potential violations of the securities laws or any other potential wrongdoing by R. Allen Stanford, or Stanford Financial Group and its affiliates. This request included, but was not limited to, the SEC’s response to complaints, tips or information and any resulting audits, inquiries and investigations.

The Times’s complaint, filed by investigative reporter and Washington Post alum Jo Becker and her editor, chides the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Dept. for stalling or failing to disclose documents related to the financial crisis, including communications between some of the top dogs in the bailout program over the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP.

Here are the complaints, both of which were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York:

09 Cv 2642 JST Complaint

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We made our share of waves when we reported last year that Playboy was recruiting women laid off from banking and finance jobs to pose nude in the adult entertainment magazine. The photos and accompanying article were supposed to hit in February, though we hear that it’s been pushed back to May.

Meanwhile, we got this press release from More magazine, published by Meredith Corp:

MORE MAGAZINE WANTS EX-WALL STREET WOMEN FOR JUNE SWIMSUIT FEATURE

WHAT: Did you recently leave your Wall Street job and are curious to explore a new side of yourself? More magazine has an opportunity for you! More is giving all former Wall Street women ages 40-60 the chance to appear in its annual “Real-Women” June issue swimsuit feature. If you’re looking to trade your power suit for a swimsuit in the only lifestyle magazine for women over 40, this is your chance. Check out http://www.more.com/lifestyle/forums/wall-street-women/ for more details.

HOW: Women should email a full-length photo and headshot, as well as a brief description of their last Wall Street job and why they left, to wallstreetwomen@more.com. Women must be in the NY tri-state area and available for a photo shoot in NYC at the end of February.

WHEN: Submissions will be accepted until February 20th.

WHO: NY tri-state area women 40-60 who have recently left Wall Street jobs.

How come no one offers this kind of thing to journalists?

(Photo of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and friends, ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange in 2000)

April Fool’s Day is still a few months away, giving magazine publisher Conde Nast some time to pull a few practice gags. The latest is its decision to kill Domino magazine — days after appointing a new chief to run it.

Here’s the press release, sent on Wednesday:

Domino magazine will cease publication, it was announced today by Charles H. Townsend, President and CEO of Condé Nast. The final issue will be published in March 2009.

“This decision to cease publication of the magazine and its website is driven entirely by the economy,” Mr. Townsend said. “Although readership and advertising response was encouraging in the early years, we have concluded that this economic market will not support our business expectations.”

Domino was launched in April 2005. The magazine’s current ratebase is 800,000.

It is one of the latest “shelter” magazines — titles dealing with the home — to go under. (Kind of ironic, really, when so many people are spending more time at home because they can’t afford to go out anymore.)

Things were different not so long ago, the New York Observer reported earlier this month:

Back in November, CEO Chuck Townsend, in a statement through a spokeswoman, conceded that there were problems at the magazine: “Ad revenue is off at Domino like it is across the industry, but the magazine is way ahead of our original plans to circulate it in the marketplace.”

Some other reports said at the time that appointing a new “publishing director” to oversee the publisher was a sign that Conde Nast had enough faith in the magazine to keep it alive.

Just kidding!

The financial crisis might have sapped more than its share of 401(k)s, but it’s providing the news business with all sorts of programming ideas.

The latest is a new personal finance website from CBS Interactive. MoneyWatch.com, which officially goes live on Wednesday, will provide the following things, according to the press release:

• The site will translate the latest financial headlines and break down how they directly impacts the readers’ and their pocketbook. MoneyWatch will provide a bird’s eye view into how the latest financial news affects their salaries, mortgages, 401Ks, and their overall finical well-being.
• With the support of CBS, MoneyWatch experts will react quickly to translate the news on a broadcast level, from national and local TV and radio stations including CBS Early Show and local CBS news affiliates. Unlike other personal finance sites now available, MoneyWatch will have a life across multi-platforms, across the web, TV, and radio, and reach a massive audience.
• Led by Eric Schroenberg, former managing editor of Money Magazine, MoneyWatch will help people who feel responsible about their money and believe that making the right decisions about what they have and what they earn is profoundly important. If the crash taught us anything, it’s that the penalty for not knowing what to do with your money has never been higher. MoneyWatch.com is spin-off from its sister site, BNET, one of the fastest growing business sites on the Web.

The announcement comes on the heels of Fox Business Network’s announcement that it will start a Saturday morning four-hour call-in program for folks worried about their money, and joins a host of other “what it means for you”-style sites dealing in personal finance, such as FiLife.com.

You may think there are one too many purveyors of financial advice out there, but who ever objected to getting a second (or third) opinion?

UPDATE: We missed this one from Hearst-Argyle Television, but thought it worth chucking into the mix. This is from a couple days ago:

With a special news series to be launched this evening throughout its station group, Hearst-Argyle Television, Inc. will seek to establish a new template for local TV journalism on economic issues.

The ongoing series, “Project Economy” will appear throughout 2009 on Hearst-Argyle Television’s TV stations, and associated websites, stretching from Portland, Maine, to Honolulu.

The on-air/online series will address not only money-saving tips but will document job-seekers’ paths to finding employment and report on local businesses’ struggles to weather the recession. Local stories will be supported by national reporting provided by Hearst-Argyle’s Washington, DC, bureau.

Lee Enterprises, publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and owner of a bunch of small U.S. daily newspapers, is learning the public relations benefits of making its executives do without.

The Davenport, Iowa-based Lee released its annual proxy filing with the U.S. government on Monday, in advance of its annual meeting. I was expecting to see the usual details buried deep within about the pay raises, bonuses and other monetary rewards that executives tend to earn even when times turn tough.

I was wrong. Here is what I found instead (the following are “named executive officers” or “NEOs,” including Chief Executive Mary Junck:

We approved the following salary adjustments for the NEOs for 2008, which became effective as of October 1, 2007:

• Ms. Junck - Increase of 3.0%, to $850,000;
• Mr. Schmidt - Increase of 3.7%, to $482,000;
• Mr. Veon - Increase of 3.1%, to $361,000;
• Mr. Mowbray - Increase of 3.1% to $335,000; and
• Mr. Kuraitis - Increase of 3.1% to $268,000.

For 2009, we have frozen NEO salaries at the levels noted above, due to difficult economic conditions affecting the Company, the publishing industry and the overall economy.

Not only that, Lee scotched its bonus plan for the executives (which could have been as much as 250 percent of base pay). And contributions to those execs’ long-term incentive plans, usually in the form of stock? Forget it. Not this year.

These decisions are unlikely to make anyone happy, but they do avoid building up a restive employee base. Lee is in trouble if it can’t negotiate new terms with its lenders — debt could overwhelm the company and potentially break it up. It’s not the kind of time when you want to be sending your top executives on junkets.

This, by the way, is something that other publishers are beginning to realize. USA Today publisher Gannett Co Inc is furloughing employees for a week during its fiscal first quarter as a way to save money.

Gannett, which said last year that it would lay off thousands of employees, is subjecting its own executives to the furlough and its chief executive is taking a voluntary pay cut in solidarity with his employees. All good PR, yes, but when Gannett said it might shut down its Tucson, Arizona daily, it managed to lose that good will: once executive Bob Dickey delivered the news, he went out to California to participate in a charity golf tournament.

(Photo: Reuters)

I ran a story on New Year’s Eve about the opportunities and perils that could face struggling newspapers if they end up surviving because of government help. I opened the story with the tale of Connecticut state lawmakers and a state commissioner who are trying to find someone to buy two Journal Register-owned dailies and several weeklies that are going to be shut down in January if they can’t be saved. From there, I explored the ramifications of government aid to newspapers.

The story got plenty of attention, though it looks like misinterpretation was rife. Many bloggers and news sources portrayed the Connecticut situation as a bailout, leading to plenty of ire directed at the lawmakers and the story. (Some conservative bloggers hinted that we deliberately omitted the lawmakers’ affiliation. For the record — they are Democrats. Also for the record: I had that in there, then deleted it, intending to put it somewhere else in the story. Then I plum forgot. No hidden agenda.)

So here’s what I’m expecting next and here’s what I still don’t know or understand. I’m eager to hear from folks who care about the future of newspapers in the United States to add their thoughts in the comments section.

• My sources in the journalism world tell me that the U.S. newspaper business won’t be pushing federal lawmakers for a bailout like the auto and finance industries. Why? They don’t like the idea of having the government as a shareholder when their job is to expose what the government does as a way of keeping it honest. Still, the story might change. If anyone hears about something like that in the works, please tell me. I’m anxious to find out.
• Will the situation in Connecticut be replicated elsewhere around the country? I wonder.
• The politicians whom I spoke to emphasized that this is not a bailout, but an attempt to lure business with tax breaks, the same way other businesses get courted. Still, I wonder: If you award tax breaks as a way to get publishers to keep a newspaper from dying, isn’t that shifting the tax burden to others? And if that is so, then how is that different from essentially handing over money? I don’t know, but I’m curious.

Folks, this may be a big culling year for U.S. newspapers. Debt is heavy, ad revenue is down and it may be the end of the line for newspaper journalism in this country as we know it. It’ll be an often depressing story to cover, but it also will be exciting and strange. If you’re an employee of a U.S. newspaper and you hear that something is going on, we want to know about it. Drop us a line. Thanks and “Happy” New Year.

PS - Journal Register has gone stone cold silent about its restructuring, its newspapers and any attempts to survive. And the whole company is still worth less than my little house in Jersey City.

(Photo: Reuters)

I ran a story on New Year’s Eve about the opportunities and perils that could face struggling newspapers if they end up surviving because of government help. I opened the story with the tale of Connecticut state lawmakers and a state commissioner who are trying to find someone to buy two Journal Register-owned dailies and several weeklies that are going to be shut down in January if they can’t be saved. From there, I explored the ramifications of government aid to newspapers.

The story got plenty of attention, though it looks like misinterpretation was rife. Many bloggers and news sources portrayed the Connecticut situation as a bailout, leading to plenty of ire directed at the lawmakers and the story. (Some conservative bloggers hinted that we deliberately omitted the lawmakers’ affiliation. For the record — they are Democrats. Also for the record: I had that in there, then deleted it, intending to put it somewhere else in the story. Then I plum forgot. No hidden agenda.)

So here’s what I’m expecting next and here’s what I still don’t know or understand. I’m eager to hear from folks who care about the future of newspapers in the United States to add their thoughts in the comments section.

• My sources in the journalism world tell me that the U.S. newspaper business won’t be pushing federal lawmakers for a bailout like the auto and finance industries. Why? They don’t like the idea of having the government as a shareholder when their job is to expose what the government does as a way of keeping it honest. Still, the story might change. If anyone hears about something like that in the works, please tell me. I’m anxious to find out.
• Will the situation in Connecticut be replicated elsewhere around the country? I wonder.
• The politicians whom I spoke to emphasized that this is not a bailout, but an attempt to lure business with tax breaks, the same way other businesses get courted. Still, I wonder: If you award tax breaks as a way to get publishers to keep a newspaper from dying, isn’t that shifting the tax burden to others? And if that is so, then how is that different from essentially handing over money? I don’t know, but I’m curious.

Folks, this may be a big culling year for U.S. newspapers. Debt is heavy, ad revenue is down and it may be the end of the line for newspaper journalism in this country as we know it. It’ll be an often depressing story to cover, but it also will be exciting and strange. If you’re an employee of a U.S. newspaper and you hear that something is going on, we want to know about it. Drop us a line. Thanks and “Happy” New Year.

PS - Journal Register has gone stone cold silent about its restructuring, its newspapers and any attempts to survive. And the whole company is still worth less than my little house in Jersey City.

(Photo: Reuters)