In a ground breaking move, the Chicago Tribune has dumped help wanted (employment) ads from its pages except for the Sunday edition. Instead, readers and directed to an employment website. Editor & Publisher has more.
This is a bold move by the publisher and, I suspect, will be seen as smart years down the track. Rather than having to navigate the migration of more ads online, they have taken the initiative and forced change upon themselves and immediately freed up resources for more appropriate content.
Newsagents could take a similar view of parts of their business and cut products and whole categories which are no longer economically viable. No, I am not (currently) talking about newspapers or magazines. I’d start with stationery. Some newsagents carry some items with a sock turn of one or less a year. We need to let go of the fear of not having what people want that one time in a year and use the space to pitch our relevance to more of our customers.