Local Bank: Tribune Papers Strive For Ad Bucks

May 1, 2008

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The Los Angeles Times and The Seattle Times buffed up their websites to make them more local-friendly.

Newspapers have been retrenching with the growth of the Internet, the rise of online classifieds, and the decline of print readers and advertisers. Reaching the audience online may be the way these dinosaurs of media survive the meteor strike of the Internet.

It appears a couple of the bigger ones managed to find leafy trees to sate their appetites. The Seattle Times' effort hinges on a local city and community guide called NWSource. Unlike much of the rest of the country, the real estate crisis has yet to hit Seattle. As a result, Seattle Times VP New Media, Patricia Lee Smith, witnessed ads sell out for neighborhood pages, with local builders buying them up.

The reward comes from CPM rates three times higher than for the websites of the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, she said in the report.