More from the NAA conference, courtesy of Borrell Associates' Martin Nyberg:

From the General Session today. Highpoints: Karen Crotchfelt, VP of Arizona Republic Newspapers laid down a challenge: Adopt "an insane commitment to reach multiple audiences with multiple media." The newspaper folks are realizing the daily paper is no longer the core product. They have to develop multiple core products. If they rise to the challenge, things are looking up.

MTV, the gurus of reaching youth, enlightened the collected newspaper marketing masters that youths age 12-34 live life on multiple levels at once and that technology

(Internet, cell phone, mp3 player, video games) is how they "make sense of the world," and gain self expression, belonging, empowerment, and togetherness.

Dan Shore of the Palm Beach Post, a national leader in profitability, offered a list of "exemplary" websites, including www.pbpost.com, www.azcentral.com. www.yourhub.com and www.phillyburbs.com .
In the session titled "How to Compete with Free," (read -- how to compete with Craigslist), a frustrated newspaper manager lightly scolded the panel. They were not talking about how to Compete with Free, but how to capitulate. No one argued with him. All the panelists agreed that relying on up-selling free classifieds (charging for more enhanced ads, more lines, etc.) won't suffice to recoup the loss of revenues. New online products such as search keyword monetization will.

Local Paid Search was portrayed in the next session as a gold mine. My company caused a stir at the end of last year by claiming that this year this category would increase 163 percent, and would account for half of all local online advertising by 2010. Your yellow pages book is gathering dust. nd yet, the yellow pages guys tell us that 82% of the people who pick up that big book and make a call, buy something. Newspapers are adding this function to their websites very rapidly. Incremental revenue from local search is a certainty.

At a later reception an online manager at a major paper said that he knew when he got home, making the case for moving more business focus to their website and getting real support was going to be like offering to be the one to pull his boss's teeth.