SECOND UPDATE: The fight moves over to Poynter.
UPDATE: The Hartford Courant Alumni Association and Refugee Camp and Watchdog Nation weigh in.
Former Hartford Courant colleague George Gombossy has started a new consumer web site in Connecticut, saying he was fired over a column he wrote about the paper's biggest advertiser.
My four-decade-long career at The Courant ended Friday as I was fired for doing my job – being the advocate for consumers.
My career began in June 1969 as a reporter in the Willimantic bureau and ended as the first – and likely last – investigative consumer columnist at the nation’s oldest newspaper of continuous publication.
The last three years have been the most satisfying, working as a team with literally thousands of consumers, shining the light on companies and public servants who failed to perform as promised.
The NYT has an excellent point about circulation declines. Guess what? It's not just that fewer people want to read papers.
Why Big Newspapers Applaud Some Declines in Circulation
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
As the newspaper industry bemoans falling circulation, major papers around the country have a surprising attitude toward a lot of potential readers: Don’t bother.
Big American newspapers sell about 10 percent fewer copies today than they did in 2000.
The big American newspapers sell about 10 percent fewer copies than they did in 2000, and while the migration of readers to the Web is usually blamed for that decline, much of it has been intentional. Driven by marketing and delivery costs and pressure from advertisers, many papers have decided certain readers are not worth the expense involved in finding, serving and keeping them.
“It’s a rational business decision of newspapers focusing on quality circulation rather than quantity, shedding the subscribers who cost more and generate less revenue,” said Colby Atwood, president of Borrell Associates, a media research firm.
That rational business decision is being driven in part by advertisers, who have changed their own attitudes toward circulation.
In the boom years, “there was more willingness by advertisers to assign some value to the occasional reader, the student, the reader who doesn’t match a certain profile,” said Jason E. Klein, chief executive of the Newspaper National Network, a marketing alliance.
But advertisers have become more cost-conscious and have learned how to reach narrowly tailored audiences on the Internet. Sponsors of preprinted ads that are inserted into a newspaper have been especially aggressive in telling papers that some circulation just is not worthwhile.
Even creepier technology is on the way. Story via Media Post and Taegan Goddard's Political Wire. When stuff shows up on my screen, it seems intrusive, much more so than fliers and letters filling my mailbox or reading ads in print.
Can or will newspaper Web sites match this?
This is why I always lie when I can about demographics information when filling out a web form.
Pols Seek To Customize TV Ads
Associated Press via Yahoo
Political candidates have long used databases covering everything from which fliers to send to a specific voter to whether to send someone to knock on his or her door.
But now, new technology that can send individualized ads to cable boxes could give candidates the ability to get into living rooms while altering their voice, appearance and policies to best suit each viewer.
In other words, factors such as race, income, marital status and favorite brands might well determine exactly what individual voters learn about candidates while watching cable TV.
While the technology of "addressable advertising" is not yet widely available, some large cable operators are getting it ready with Comcast Corp., which plans to roll it out within two years.
The system is already in place on some TVs, but Comcast won't say how many, so it is unknown what--if any--impact it might have in 2008. "In whatever medium we can, we want to talk to voters in as individualized a way as we can," says Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who worked on John Kerry's 2004 campaign.
For instance, a candidate could emphasize a position on global warming to an environmental activist while giving health care plan information to people without insurance. And it could also allow for adjustments to mannerisms, speech patterns and appearance.
UPDATE: The Hartford Courant Alumni Association and Refugee Camp and Watchdog Nation weigh in. 
