Fear, or just loathing?

An anonymous reader asks:

Is there any way you can hope to compete with a monster like the Morning News? Aren't you afraid that they'll just crush you?

I appreciate the concern for our well-being. Certainly, any discussion on the downsides of our endeavor always conjures up images of the Belo building sprouting arms and legs and lumbering down Main Street looking to flatten us.

I do, on occasion, worry about such things. On occasions like when I breathe, sleep or wake. (I'm crazy, but not stupid.) Then, I look at their new attempt to merge the worlds of print and online advertising, and breathe a lot easier.

Let's say that I'm looking for someone to get rid of the bugs in my yard. Apparently, there is some thought that I'll go to the DMN site and see that they have something called Adsearch. I'll then figure out that I should click on a friendly button:

Then, after waiting 15 seconds for the page to load (on a broadband connection), I'll pick through a list of 60 categories to find "pest control." I'll click.

I find an ad for "Las Colinas Pest Control." Not just any ad-- their exact small-space print ad from the paper. It's clickable! Not to their website, of course, but to a detailed zoom of a piece of the ad. (A tiny frame listing on the side will link me, eventually to their website.)

I'm willing to wager that I'm the only person to get to that ad today. If not, I'm one of a precious minority. It's like a SuperPages for people who hate finding things. And the resources required to put in clickable, zoomable images of every little ad can't be inconsequential. I wonder if these webads count against the "future advertising credit" makegoods the News has had to hand out.

It should also be reiterated that our enterprise is not about beating the DMN. Whether we succeed or not, we fully expect the DMN to still be a major, if not the dominant, player. Local markets need a second voice, and we think we've cracked a model that will allow us to that in Dallas and (once we've proven ourselves) maybe twenty other markets.

And, my anonymous friend, when I see initiatives like Adsearch, I take heart. Not to the point of hubris, but it's like a local media pundit said to me when I posed your question to him:

They're just not cool. And they can't buy cool.