Mark Cuban, who's turned his attention to the challenges of the newspaper industry lately, issues pointed advice in a recent post:

Ive spent a lot of time thinking about the Newspaper and Magazine businesses lately. Not because I want to buy a company in either industry. I dont. Im spending the time because Im looking for the best possible ways to promote the movies we distribute and HDNet programming.

Its expensive to advertise movies or TV shows in either newspapers or magazines. Very expensive Where entertainment is traditionally advertised, you guys know you got us, and it shows in your pricing. The pricing in the Movie and TV sections of print media is outrageous.

Which means that every single company in the entertainment business is looking for a way to never ever have to spend a nickel with you again ... So its time to buck up. You either squeeze what you can and cry when it happens, or you step up and create cost effective alternatives... [C]ome up with new ideas, or a new version of your resume...

Mark's right. In fact, his comments remind me of those of a friend of mine -- a small-business owner whose company has about 150 employees.

Back in early 2001, my friend was reassessing his strategies for recruiting. After costing it out, and looking at the bang he got for his buck, he moved all his recruitment advertising out of the newspaper and onto Monster.

"I can't believe that they don't realize that what they're offering is no longer competitive," he told me at the time.

Since then, newspapers have worked very hard at making their classified offerings more competitive -- enhancing their online capabilities and adding direct mail to target non-subscribers, among other things. But it took a cratering of classified dollars before newspapers took the hint.

We hope newspapers won't wait so long to implement new ideas for the rest of their product.

By the way, Mark, you really should buy a newspaper company. That would be an even bigger challenge than turning the Mavs around.

(Image from chrisfoley484)

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