Biz desks spending less time covering advertising

Brian Steinberg of Advertising Age writes about how coverage of the advertising industry has declined in recent years.

Steinberg writes, “In years past, the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Sun-Times and The New York Times, among others, thought enough of the ad business to earmark space in their pages for an oft-recurring signature feature usually written by a designated columnist. Hard-bitten scribes such as George Lazarus and Phil Dougherty were lionized when they served as columnists for, respectively, the Tribune and the Times.

“These days, newspapers have to produce work for venues other than the printed page, many with fewer reporters among their ranks. Add to this the notion that much of the real eyebrow-raising news about advertising comes not from campaigns but from changes in technology, combine it with the fact that many of the agencies that produce ad work have consolidated into larger, staid, publicly traded entities, and it’s not hard to discern why traditional coverage of the sector may not be as robust as it once was.

“The Sun-Times recently parted ways with Lewis Lazare, its ad and media columnist, while USA Today has tamped down its coverage of the subject due to ‘resources,’ according to a spokeswoman. The Chicago Tribune once hosted a column penned for many years by the crusty Mr. Lazarus, then Jim Kirk, but no longer runs the feature.”

Read more here.