Times woes continue

Tribune bosses Dennis Fitzsimons and Scott Smith didn't bring good news to the Times building today. Full-run advertising in the Times fell 11% in July, compared to July 2004—the worst drop of any Tribune paper, the L.A. Business Journal website reports. It's actually a little worse for the Times, on the internal politics scale, since advertising volume at the corporate rival (oops, I mean sister paper) Chicago Tribune was up 6.7%. The ad drain at the LAT figures to get worse if Nikki Finke is correct in reporting today on the LA Weekly website that movie studios are close to drastically reducing the full-page ads they buy in the Times and other newspapers. They have the wrong demographics for movie audiences, she writes. On a semi-related note, the blogger at Independent Sources thinks there's something fishy about Dan Neil writing a positive column about Chevrolet soon after General Motors drops its ad boycott of the Times. I don't.