It is a well known psychological factor - you become what you think you are. Think you are a loser? You become a loser. The PD is acting like it has lost the "battle" with other media... so it is losing - drowning - dying. When you repeatedly tell folks that advertising dollars are down, others who advertise hesitate to buy ads - thinking "hmmm, what do those other advertisers know that I don't?"
It becames a downward spiral, that proverbial slippery slope. Once the descent reaches a particular point and momentum stopping it becomes nearly impossible.
The PD is going about this all wrong. They should accept a lower profit marginf for the business for now , increase stories, cover those things that no one else can cover - in depth - which TV, radio and the internet cannot do. Instead of raising the price of the paper and paying all those new salepeople hired to increase subscriptions the PD needs more than ever to have the BEST writers, editors, photographers. Readers notice: fewer stories, large pics and graphics that fill space but do little else, a steady decline in writing quality (do they really thing flippant is a good attitude for news stories?)
And the fact of the matter is, no one - NO ONE - can beat a newspaper for getting more quality ads to the most number of people on a daily basis. Sure one can search the internet but in the time it takes to check out one item in four or five online stores one can flip through every ad insert in the Sunday PD.
And among the worst things the "new" PD is doing is assuming that all its readers love to finish getting their news on the internet... Stories lack details and carry the proviso, to see more visit cleveland.com Well DUH, if people wanted to read their PD news online why are they buying the paper (by subscription or at newstands)? What a slap in the face to the very people who actually pay money to read the paper. If the goal is to kill the PD, they're on the right path.