DeWese--Trouble Brewing

You have to ask, "What's all the worry over a lousy buck-fifty?" It's not as if print sales will be down 20 percent this year. So, excuuuuse me if I dare to disagree with these esteemed gentlemen.

I think the real reason for the slower print growth is that some of you didn't work hard enough to sell more profitable business. I believe that many print salespeople have allowed profit margins to erode rather than improve. If you all had added just a teensy 5 percent to every job during 1999, Andy Paparozzi's base dollar would have been $1.05 plus the 1.5 percent real growth in print demand. Since that didn't happen in 1999, if you would just please add 5 percent to every job in 2000, it would result in real print growth actually outpacing the GDP. A more modest 2.5-percent price increase would put print growth on the same level as GDP.