Hasta La Creative!

Print-ad revenue at U.S. newspapers last year suffered its biggest decline since at least 1950, the Newspaper Association of America reported.

Print-ad revenue plummeted 9.4% to $42 billion in 2007. Classified ads, which account for a third of the total, were hit especially hard, down almost 17%.

The NAA’s estimate showed that while newspapers’ online-ad revenue is growing, the extra ad dollars coming from the Internet aren’t enough to offset the lost print revenue.

Reports from newspaper publishers in recent weeks suggest the falloff is worse so far this year. In February, Gannett Co.’s newspapers saw an 8.3% fall in same-newspaper ad revenue compared with ad revenue in February 2007. McClatchy Co.’s ad revenue fell 13% in February, New York Times Co.’s was down 6.6%, and Media General Inc. reported an almost 18% drop in publishing-ad revenue for the month.

“We have no evidence to show that the bottom has been reached yet,” says Gordon Borrell, chief executive of media research firm Borrell Associates.

[via The Wall Street Journal]