The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age
by Philip Meyer 

University of Missouri Press (November 30, 2004) 

page 49:

Influence gets into the picture in a rudimentary way.  The sophisticated 
advertiser will use survey data to estimate the impact of a particular kind 
of ad by asking survey respondents if they remember the ad or can name the 
product.  These numbers help establish general weights or rules of thumb 
that represent estimated impact.  Tin one textbook example, a color ad gets 
more than twice the weight of the same ad in black and white.  The back page 
of a newspaper section is better than the front (probably because of fewer 
distractions).

But that's not the kind of influence we're talking about in the quest for an 
economic rationale for quality journalism.  There aught to b e a way to 
measure not just awareness but also the elements of trust and bonding with 
the community.  And effective ad in a trusted publication would be worth 
more to advertisers.  

Advertisers might be making such calculations intuitively, without realizing 
it.  The marketplace absorbs information in mysterious ways.  When the space 
shuttle <i>Challenger</i> crashed in t1986, it took a panel of experts 
several months to figure out that the defective component was the system of 
O-rings connecting segments of Morton Thiokol's solid rocket booster that 
was used to bring the space shuttle into orbit.  But the stock market 
quickly sense which of the four main contractors was responsible, and the 
knowledge was reflected in the value of the Morton Thiokol shares with just 
a few days. 

The collective wisdom of markets was recognized by the Defense Department in 
2003 when it tried to create a Policy Analysis Market to anticipate terror 
strikes before they happened - a good idea that was shot down by bad public 
relations.  

If Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of the marketplace is at work in setting 
advertising rates, then influential newspapers should be getting more for 
their advertising that those   with less influence - whether they recognize 
the reason for it or not. ...