On December 1st and 2nd, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will hold Public Workshops and Roundtables: From Town Crier to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?. I am thinking of attending and wearing my shirt which says, “I get my news on Twitter”. This shirt always seems to give old newspaper editors palpitations and the recent news coming out of Puerto Rico, which I got primarily via Twitter reinforces my views.

The workshops and conferences are going to ask questions like “How is the Internet changing advertising expenditures? What further changes are forecast?” It is popular to blame at least part of the decline in advertising revenue for newspapers on sites like Craigslist. Craigslist is siphoning off the classified advertisements. But what about the business advertisers? I didn’t have any clear information on this, but a discussion I was part of last night changed some of my thinking.

I attended a “Tweet Crawl”. This is an event where people who communicate with one another via Twitter get together to talk face to face. In the old days, these sorts of meetings were dominated by geeks like myself talking APIs and interfaces. Last night, the meeting seemed dominated by business people and marketing executives. It took place at Lisa Davenport’s Home Gallery. Ms. Davenport supplied the food and drinks for the attendees and by agreeing to be the host of the event had over fifty influentials pack her space. It is too early to tell how much sales and buzz this will generate for her, but it is fair to guess that it will generate a lot more bang for the buck than the spreads she had been buying in local papers.

In one conversation, Ms. Davenport commented about the lack of effectiveness she had seen from print advertising. Kara Parlin commented about similar experiences she’s seen with her husband’s company, Sonny Parlin Photography print advertising campaigns. Ms. Davenport related a story of the one time that the newspaper had driven traffic to her store. She took questions from readers for a series on interior design and gave recommendations in return. Her phone rang off the hook, but the newspaper pulled the series claiming that it was giving her unfair advantage over other interior designers. It seemed like the one opportunity that the newspaper had to make advertizing effective they abandoned.

The discussion drifted to how Ms. Davenport might be able to use social marketing in collaboration with a realtor that was attending the gathering to boost sales for both parties. Standing in the background, Suzi Craig of Fathom who helped organize the event smilingly nodded her head in agreement with the discussion and made herself available to anyone else that wanted to know more about social marketing.

As I headed home, I thought about the shirt I had been wearing. If the shirt “I get my news on Twitter” causes palpitations for old newspaper editors, a new shirt may send them into cardiac arrest: “I get my brand views on Twitter”.

Yet newspapers don’t need to be left out of the equation. A good newspaper is always part of a local social community and if they started incorporating social marketing into the advertising packages they sell, they could increase revenues and provide a greater service to local businesses. Will local papers find a way of doing this? Perhaps we can talk about this in Washington.

(Originally published at DigiDayDaily.)