As traditional print media continues its steep declines in advertising sales and circulation, publishers are struggling to come up with new and creative ways to generate revenue.

Ad revenues in the newspaper industry plunged 16.7% last year to $37.8 million r, according to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). The 2009 take is estimated to fall another 17.3% to $31.6 billion according to Alan Mutter, a Silicon Valley executive who once lead the newsrooms of the Chicago Sun-Times and San Francisco Chronicle and now writes a blog titled “Reflections of a Newsosaur.”

Mutter’s estimate would put ad revenues at their lowest levels since 1965, when the industry took in $4.42 billion, or $30.22 billion when adjusted for inflation, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) reported.

While the worst economic downturn since World War II has eviscerated the fortunes of print media companies like The New York Times Co. (NYSE:

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This is a guest post by Barry Ritholtz, editor of The Big Picture Blog and author of the newly released book, Bailout Nation.

Over the past five years, I have appeared on various Financial TV shows over a 100 times. But I am also a huge consumer of financial news, in print, on the web, radio, and of course, TV. Being on both sides of the camera gives me a fairly good perspective on what does and doesn’t work on TV. I also have some strong ideas as to what is good and bad TV in terms of providing a social utility, being part of the democratic process, etc.

Indeed, this is a longstanding interest of mine. Over the weekend, I referenced the current Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) issue that focused on the role of the media in the credit crisis, stock market and economic

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Joshua Foust at Registan.net is one of my favorite bloggers, even when I disagree with him. Two things he has written recently are worth a look: a critique of the rather poor blog coverage, in his opinion, of the Russian invasion of Georgia in the Columbia Journalism Review, and a new post which vents some of his fury over the misplaced hysteria as expressed in a recent Wall Street Journal op/ed by Matthew Kaminski. Foust believes that in "the last few months the WSJ has been particularly disconnected from reality." Ignorant American opinion makers shaking in their boots at the strong and unstoppable Russian advance? Check. The entrenchment in conventional wisdom of Russia as strong and worthy of respect and fear? Check. The willful ignorance of Russia’s many structural political and economic problems because it overran a military 25 times smaller in a battle ...