I know what I'll do: I'll make it a theme night of newspapers bitching about not getting rich enough! :)

Anyway, this NYT article looks at how U.S. advertisers are starting to turn their noses up at buying ads in nationally distributed newspapers -- like the NYT, for example! :)

An excerpt:

ark DiMassimo, an advertising executive in New York, recently heard from a major client who decided to pull back on advertising in nationally circulated newspapers. The company's executives wanted to try a more targeted local-newspaper approach - inspired, perhaps, by the narrowly focused ads proliferating online.

"One day they woke up and said, 'I'm sure some of this advertising is working, but I don't know how to tell if any of it is,' " said Mr. DiMassimo, chief executive and creative director at his own agency.

Many newspapers have been ailing as readers defect to other sources of news and as advertisers seek new ways to attract potential customers. The biggest challenge, by most accounts, comes from Web sites and search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Both companies reported revenue last week that surpassed Wall Street's expectations. Yahoo, for instance, reported $672 million in ad revenue for the first quarter after subtracting payments to sites that display its ads - a 50 percent increase over the first quarter of last year. Google is also expanding its suite of advertising products to offer ads with graphics and animation.

Newspaper Web sites still benefit from classifieds and other ads that once belonged almost solely to newspapers. But their ad revenue pales in comparison with that of the big Internet search engines and portals.

Within the newspaper business itself, however, recent financial results suggest that big newspapers are suffering more than smaller ones.