The Newspaper Association of America?s (NAA) website is currently touting its recent launch (with the Audit Bureau of Circulations - ABC, and Scarborough Research) of a program (Audience-FAX) that purports to integrate newspaper circulation, readership and online audience measurements (like page views) on ABC?s U.S. media statements.

This new index of a newspaper?s composite ?reach? is compelling but flawed.

After registering, anyone can quickly generate a report for almost any ?market?. The results are conveniently displayed and, ostensibly, data driven.

According to the NAA?s PR release, ?Advertisers are applauding??

We think their claim is bit premature.

The idea, to develop a more accurate measure of an industry?s online and print properties? ?reach? is, amazingly, a sensible idea?and, if it were grounded in reality, I would view it as an important starting point to get at to what really counts??results?. This idea should also resonate with all those independent job boards who publish their ?numbers?- totally unverified by any real outside auditor (don?t get me started). Their complaints about the newspaper industry are, unfortunately, simply an attempt to throw stones from a glass house.

However, in the execution of this new measure it?s clear that ?marketing? not ?results? was the goal. You merely have to dig a little deeper to get at how ?readership? is defined to understand how the newspaper industry auditors have been compromised.

The November 6 Wall Street Journal reporting on the program in the Media and Marketing section got at the real reason why a new measure was needed. The story, Newspapers Try New Math on Circulation, confirmed the problems of the new math noting the continuing decline of print cuirculation.

Classified Intelligence also described the new program in their (private subscription) November 8 newsletter (we do recommend this newsletter as among the best paid subscriptions in the staffing industry). CI quoted an NAA report, Newspaper Footprint: Total Audience in Print and Online as saying that nationally while online (newspaper properties) is up 9%, the 2.6% declines in daily and 3.5% in Sunday print circulation still translate to ever lower revenue figures.

We feel this latest effort to re-build the newspaper?s help-wanted properties from a purely marketing perspective is like trying to dig a new foundation in the rubble?while the building?s walls are still falling.

We are watching the final throes of a once dominant industry for employment classifieds and it is pathetic. Combining into one index the Newspaper?s meager online successes and cooking them to cover over a continuous and disastrous print decline by claiming that it would make their data more ?rounded? constitutes (at least in my mind) a serious break with reality after decades of lost and squandered opportunity.

Their problem is not marketing. Their problem is an attitude about who owns the channel(s) of communication to the public?and the newspaper owners still don?t get it. The people who work for them are simply stuck and making the best of it. Eventually they will need to be retrained as they start ehri next career.

Even the recruitment advertising agencies (who have been reinventing themselves for the last decade) seemed to have had enough. At the recent NAA meeting covered by CI several panelists and advertisng agency owners warned the Newspaper classified leaders once again to stop whining and make the necessary changes if they even want to be included in the mix of channels (job boards, seo, aggregators, social media, etc.) that will constitute how employers are shifting their recruiting dollars

Why should recruiting leaders care? The data you get from classifieds, print and online is seriously suspect and has little or no transparency about how the numbers are generated. It offers no alignment to your need to measure results.

Why should job boards care? There is still 4 billion dollars being spent on print help-wanted recruitment advertising. In some cases it works. In many situations it is still being spent out of habit or desperation. No one has spent any effort to actually study the results so most of the hype is just speculation. Think deeply about what percentage of your online clients are demanding better quality information from you. Triple that number and you'll have some sense of the pressure you will be under in 2 years if you don't adapt.

Finally, Dinosaurs don?t care. They are almost gone from the world. We simply give them a wide berth, stuck as they are, and we continue on the path of change. Someday, floating gently on the bog, where they eventually disappear, carefully placed by one of their former disappointed clients, will be their tombstone. On it will be written: itsalwaysbeenthisway.com.