Two little statistics from 2004 have now driven over $1B worth of deals: - national newspaper advertising was up 6% YoY - online advertising was up 25% year over year So now newspapers, in a panic, have been on a spending spree: DJ (the Wall Street Journal) buys MKTW for $520M, WPO (the Washington Post) buys Slate from MSFT, and now as of last night, The New York Times is buying About.com from Primedia for $410M (PRM paid $690M in 2000). In a wierd twist (different calculators?) Primedia says the acquisition was for 30x 2004 EBITDA and NYT says 23x. It strikes me that all of these companies are paying full values from owners who were dying to unload these properties. While online advertising is going to continue to grow at a pace that makes it hard to fail it does seem that its best to stay ahead of the curve by not buying the floundering old-school properties but to make acquisitions along the lines of GOOG's purchase of Blogger or ASKJ's purchase of Bloglines.