A newspaper closes.

One of the oxymoronicies of the advertising industry is our obsession with print now that print has virtually no role left.

Before TV, print was the glamor medium. Beautiful artwork, lustrous language. Then during TV but before the internet, print was a complement--a rational reasoned argument to TV's image-making power. Now in the internet age, that role--and others--is filled by websites, web content, banner ads and more.

All that to say, in post-literate America, print and newspapers (which were invented to carry print ads) are dying. According to the NYTimes, another paper-paper, another grey lady, bit the dust yesterday, though it will continue to publish online. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/business/media/28link.html?ref=business

None of this, however, changes much how agencies view print or clients buy print. We still walk into pitches with eight-page manifestos that never run and spreads that never see the light of day. We still spend hours and hours struggling over headlines and body-copy few people read. And we've yet, as an industry, tried to formulate a new role for print.

I believe that the era of visual-punny print is dead and has been dead for years, but no one has told art-directors, award shows or clients. There is still room for well-reasoned and concise reasoning. Clearly stated. Beautifully laid out. There is still room for Lois-like print power (of the sort I wrote about in yesterday's post.) There is still room for a Marty Puris-like ode like this: "The man who controls corporations ought to be able to control his own car." Internet advertising, which does not place a limit on the amount of words you can use--keep writing, there's always more you can say--or a premium on visual cleverness (why bother, you can fall back on SISOMO, SIghtSOundMOtion.) In other words, the flaccidness of internet creative has also allowed traditional print to get worse. We don't need copy points--the web will handle that. So let's just be goofy.

There is still room for print like that, I think. But no one does it anymore. The glib, facile and simplistic (which is different than simple) is easier. See above. One is good. One sucks. One built a brand, an ethos, a category. One built parity and me-too.