Sandy Cullen takes an interesting look at local government, and perhaps public education’s willingness to support advertising. Advertising is everywhere and will be more so in the future. One of the reasons for this is the ongoing fragmentation of media. The internet provides many, many options for local, regional, national and international news, weather, sports and arts information.

Advertising is simply following eyeballs.

I have some other candidates for advertising:

• Kenton Peters’ Blue Federal Courthouse and the WARF building – advertising can only help these eyesores
• Camp Randall and the Kohl Center’s exteriors. I think we have enough grey, certainly during our winter months
• The City/County Building, East Berlin architecture, circa 1960’s at its best.

Cullen interviewed a number of local advertising firms, but not the largest – her own publisher, Capital Newspapers. Capital (SEC 10-Q) reported six months revenue (through March 31, 2005) of $60,225K and operating income of 14,081K (23%!)