The Latino Newspaper Network (LNN), an advertising sales network based in Naperville (IL), folded in mid-May. One of the reasons might have been the small number of member newspapers. El Mensajero (San Francisco, circ. 150,000), Enlace (San Diego, circ. 85,000) and Impacto USA (Los Angeles, circ. 250,000) were LNN's only members. The fourth founding member, Noticias de la Semana, a Spanish-language home-delivered weekly that the New York Daily News planned to begin publishing last spring, was never launched. Despite several research studies showing that readers and print media advertisers favor home-delivery (subscription and free delivery) over single copy-sales (rack and newsstand sales), the home-delivery method is quite costly (see “New weekly newspaper ad sales network bets on home-delivery,” page 3, Portada® No.7, January/February 2004). Additionally, important print media buyers, such as large retail chains, prefer to negotiate with newspaper publishers directly, rather than buy print through an ad-sales network. The brokerage of ad-sales networks can make print buys more expensive.
