It’s no surprise, phone books and newspapers have been merging, downsizing and going out of business for the past 15-20 years. You may have noticed, mostly have not, that the phonebook isn’t even delivered to your doorstep anymore. In my market (VA) you need to go to WaWa or Sheetz to get one.
There was a time when a .45 caliber handgun wouldn’t go through a phone book (I tried) and today………. I wouldn’t trust it stopping a BB gun. The same can be said about the local newspapers and media outlets with the larger ones moving their operations online to garner digital traffic and subscription while their print business slowly declines. If you call around for ad space in the existing newspapers you’ll get some astonishing figures whereas an ad in the phone book is “included” if you advertise on the companies’ digital platform.
What’s happening to local newspapers and media?
As more and more Americans consume their content online everyone is “getting” their content from different sources. Some of these being credible sources while others not so credible and so……the age of misinformation is born. In some rural parts of the U.S. and depending on other stats like age, technological competency, cell service, Americans get no news at all. They’re in what’s being called a “news desert” where local media doesn’t exist at all anymore. With so many Americans in these parts of the countries aging, unwilling to learn mobile devices or computers, they heavily rely on print news. In some areas (more like many) these “news deserts” are creating great political divide and furthering the degradation of American Democracy. Who’s to say which media are bias or lean one way or the other, in some cases this is easy to see. With streaming TV on the rise there are even more “news” outlets that Americans are consuming some of which are designed to look like legit sources. Then there’s social media which fuels these fires even more and become a platform for EVERYONE to speak their opinion and political views. For so many Americans this NOISE creates confusion, disarray and allows misinformation to spread quickly. The 2024 presidential race is a perfect example of this where Meta banned Russia from their platforms to curb the election interference and spread of misinformation.
This is causing a huge disconnect in what’s going on state to state, community to community and short circuits in our communication as a country. Consumers are being “left out” of the news outlets. If they’re not online they get nothing, no local news only national news via the TV.
Phone books in the 80’s & 90’s were booming business for the phone companies even up til 2005-09 there was a ton of ad revenue. The amount of profit the phone companies were making is staggering as the cost to print and distribute was pennies. Today, the phone book isn’t distributed but it still holds a great deal of revenue for the phone company, DEX who is the #lastmanstanding and according to Joe Walsh the CEO, the way he wanted it. Between 2015 and 2018 the 3 phone book providers, AT&T, YellowBook and Verizon Superpages battled it out. Two companies merged phone books (AT&T and Verizon) and one (YellowBook) went out of business.
So why is it that so many advertisers remain in the phone book? They’re unsure of the ever changing digital landscape and how to use the various channels effectively in their market to sustain business. In many cases they’re sold a bill of goods by someone over the phone they’ve never met our assume the phone companies “digital portfolio” is the best for their business’ needs. The age of misinformation continues to grow and every day there are more and more “fools” who believe everything they read online and never consider the source.
