One of the big themes in local this year is the increased amount of localization in national ad campaigns. We saw it with U-Haul and Progressive Insurance a couple of weeks ago on our podium at ILM East in Boston. Those have been mostly search plays. But we also see it with display ads on national networks developed by local companies, such as Gannett and Morris. And we see it on localized efforts placed via companies such as Centro.

A mainstay in that part of the industry is Media Networks Inc., the Stamford, Connecticut-based Time Warner-owned company that specializes in localizing national advertisers in print magazines and more promisingly — given the decline in the print magazine business — a wide variety of national and local websites.

MNI dates back to 1969, but really began transforming to the digital age in 2006. Today, digital accounts for roughly $35 million, or half of its $65 million to $70 million annual revenues. Key categories include auto, health care, finance and regional banking. Education is also a big play. In addition, the company places smaller regional advertisers that want to broadcast a national-like presence via placement in national publications.

MNI Digital head Michael Nasif tells us the company works in close partnership with agencies. “You need a very specific approach to local markets,” he says, noting that a carmaker might be pushing a family van in one part of the country and a sports car in another.

While MNI is agnostic toward media channels, Nasif says the challenge is to provide more accountability at the local level. National clients are used to greater accountability from print magazines. “The nature of a paid subscriber in terms of brand value and a trustworthy approach is not automatically replicated online,” he says.

Nasif also notes, interestingly, that while tablets have been suggested as the savior of magazines, it is going to take a lot of work, given that tablet penetration is still relatively low, and that media subscriptions on tablets are a piece of a piece of that.

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The debate about the future of journalism reached the height of silliness last year when journalist turned banker Steven Rattner suggested that The New York Times be subsidized by the government like the BBC. But the economics of journalism has always driven the format, aside from journalistic labors of love ranging from penny savers in colonial times to hyperlocal blogs today.

As recounted in Ken Doctor’s valuable new book, Newsonomics, “the institution of American journalism owes more to the institution of the department store than the First Amendment” — a 1988 comment attributed to Knight Ridder exec Jim Batten.

But what’s happened? The department stores have consolidated and shifted much of their marketing; big chunks of paid classifieds have been Craigslisted; and the circulation (audience) has increasingly moved down the slippery slope to a potpourri of “continuous partial attention” news channels. Indeed, the details found in newsprint aren’t always especially sought after. As Doctor notes, just 44 percent can be bothered to click past the headlines in news aggregators like Google News to get to the original source.

Dead. Dead. Dead. Nobody in his right mind would plan a future at a newspaper or TV news broadcast anymore, right? But then there is this inconvenient statistic: Applications to journalism schools have more than doubled in the past several years — even with tuition bills exceeding $50,000 at the elite institutions.

For the journalist who will pursue his or her avocation, plentiful options exist, notes Doctor, a former Knight Ridder Digital exec and publisher at newspapers and alternative weeklies who currently does analysis for Outsell and writes the Content Bridges blog. The solutions are structured in the book as “twelve new trends that will shape the news you get.”

The trends are right on and more than familiar to our BIA/Kelsey audience (“Itch the Niche!”). But happily, Doctor avoids the blue sky and covers the bases with the aplomb of an all star. His comprehensive review, interesting detail and demand that the relationships between business and journalism be creatively re-explored make this a valuable book for those who care about the future of journalism, and its critical role in democratic societies.

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Digital media is more cannibalistic than complementary and is seriously eating into the demand for traditional news sources such as newspapers, TV and news magazines, according to the third annual survey of news users done by Outsell Inc.

The survey findings are based on almost 3,000 consumers and are fully detailed in Outsell’s “News Users 2009” report, written by former Knight Ridder executive Ken Doctor. It essentially pours water on hopes that online traffic from Google and other news aggregators represents new growth opportunities for traditional publishers that ultimately outweigh any cannibalism. In fact, 44 percent said news headlines on aggregator products such as Google News suffice in themselves.

Indeed, such aggregator products are increasingly competing with traditional news products as primary “morning” news sources. They’re tied with newspapers and catching up with TV, which leads with a 30 percent share, a drop-off from 36 percent three years ago.

Long-term trends may be worse than the broad numbers suggest, as a segmentation analysis by Outsell found that “Power Users,” who represent slightly less than half of the market, are increasingly relying more on digital products. These users have “omnivorous” appetites for news, simultaneously serving as core newspaper subscribers while relying more heavily on news aggregator products.

Outsell, however, found they are spending less time with print publications. Moreover, they are increasingly inclined to drop their newspaper subscriptions.

“It’s worth watching the trends set by power news users — they tend to foreshadow where all news usage is moving,” notes Outsell. “The daily newspaper and news magazine habit is quickly ebbing.”

The survey also suggests that paid content may not be a panacea — something that The New York Times is betting on, as it implements plans to move to paid online models in early 2011.  Analysts (like me) would argue that The Times exists in a class of its own as a news source and may prove the exception. Another industry hope –shared by Apple, Amazon, HP and others — is that large computer tablets might entice people to pay for a la carte or subscription content.

Without thinking about the exceptionalism of The Times, or the future of tablets, 75 percent of news users told Outsell that they would get their local news from a different source if a pay wall was put up. Only a small minority said they would be willing to pay for some type of paid content (i.e., online access included with print subscription, online-only access or some other type of “press pass.”).

When the time comes, however, many users will surely reconsider. Just look at the evolution of pay per call, and more recently, paid iPhone apps. None of this, however, undermines the challenges that traditional media face with/and against Google and other digital sources.

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