Journalism is what is really becoming extinct

The Wall Street Journal has long been known for some pretty incisive, well researched articles. Which is why Emily Steel’s “Extinction Threatens Yellow-Pages Publishers” (Media & Marketing, Nov. 17 – subscription may be required) article was such a huge disappointment.

Usually the concept of “journalism” is to research both sides, gather all the facts, and then try to present a somewhat balanced presentation so readers can appreciate both sides and draw their own conclusions. Note that nowhere in that process do you see the concept of injecting your own bias into the article. Ms. Steel apparent missed that day during her reporter training.

Why can I make this claim? In her preliminary efforts Ms. Steel had free access to many of the industry leaders and even went as far as to spend time with them on the phone in gathering her facts for this article. Yet in her one-sided assessment of the overall health of the Yellow Pages industry nowhere do you see any of their comments presented. Instead it’s a simple one way conclusion that print is useless, faces extinction, and the publishers online efforts are for naught.

Since Ms. Steel conveniently skipped the facts, let’s be sure you at least know them.

“The yellow-pages industry is running out of lifelines.” – A great opening designed to sell papers but a conclusion that has no basis for truth. In fact, how is it that she can make the claim that publisher IYP efforts are floundering but then put up a graph which shows substantial growth in the major ones (SuperPages.com and YellowPages.com) who have seen 46% and 9% growth in unique site visitors in the last year ???

“In recent years, as its customers migrated to the Web — flocking to sites like Google — the telephone-directory business followed, hoping the Internet would be its salvation.” – I can only assume that she missed the fact that no other advertising medium generates new and qualified sales leads as effectively as the Yellow pages.  In 2007, print and online Yellow pages generated over 17 billion look-ups.  But more importantly 90% of those references came from consumers ready to buy goods and services. Not people just browsing, but buyers. Never mind that almost half of those buyers were new customers to the business they chose from those very Yellow Pages products!!!!  Which other medium does Ms. Steel suggest that would produce such a volume of high quality leads??

“Print and online ad spending on yellow pages will plummet 6.3% next year, more than double the rate of decline expected for broadcast TV, according to forecasts by Wachovia analyst John Janedis.” – Heaven forbid I challenge a respected analyst, but in a rapidly slowing economy one of the first moves small businesses will make is to pull back on their advertising spending whether it makes sense or not. Both reporter and analyst ignore the research which shows that Yellow Pages offer an average sales ROI of 33:1 for national advertisers, and nearly 14:1 for local advertisers.  And of course those 3+ million local and national advertisers that do rely on the Yellow Pages to connect with consumers must be ignorant. Why would any business advertise in a media which actually makes the phone ring??

“Facing the real prospect of extinction, the publishers, many of which have considerable debt, have been slashing jobs, scrapping dividends and exiting unprofitable markets.” I guess this reporter hasn’t looked around much because there aren’t many businesses that aren’t doing the same things in this down economy. Let’s deal with the real elephant in the room – because Idearc (IAR) and RH Donnelley (RHD) have received notice from the NYSE about potentially being delisted from the exchange because their stock price is below $1 per share, the assumption that immediately flows is that these companies are about to close their doors, as well as all the other publishers in the industry even if they aren’t publicly traded. The fact is delisting doesn’t necessarily mean that a company is going to go bankrupt. There are plenty of private companies that survive without the benefit of a stock market thank you, and it is not unusual for a company to be delisted and still be profitable. Ironically there are three newspaper stocks that have been delisted by the NYSE this year — GateHouse Media Inc. (one of the nation’s largest publishers of community newspapers), Sun-Times Media Group, and the Journal Register Co., but they still seem to be around.

The NYSE lists 53 companies on its Web site that don’t comply with listing standards, including Rite Aid, Six Flags (amusement park operator), Westwood One Inc., the syndicator of programs to radio stations, and Citadel Broadcasting Corporation, a radio broadcasting company. On the Nasdaq Stock Market, by my quick count some 265 or so companies closed below $1 yesterday, compared with 53 at the end of last year. Nasdaq stocks under $1 yesterday included Sirius XM Radio Inc. and Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc.. Do we think either of these companies is about to become “extinct”???

What you didn’t see in the article is that without question the Yellow Pages industry has succeeded in migrating to a true multi-platform product set which includes print, online, search optimization, mobile, and even direct mail and billboards, to provide an optimal one-stop advertising program for any business. It’s also clear that this conversion has come faster and more effectively than any other media players.  This is evident in the fact that most local search engines get a bulk of their search data from those various publishers that are approaching “extinction”.

Next time Ms. Steel, could we please get all sides of the discussion in your articles?