Can't agree that they're "effective." Still too few people actually reading them. Too many people get their news through visual media; smarter folks seek it out on the Internet.

Newspapers are stilted; trapped by the mindset they so effectively propagated in the last century. Free rags still make a profit, but need to sell sleaze to do so. Newspapers won't bow to that, but will sell sleazy car ads instead.

There lies the rub. As the auto industry implodes, that form of advertising must dry up as well. Customers burned too often by shady dealers realize the "conspiracy" to sell us shit runs through a less-than-noble pandering to propagandistic merchants, and figure if we're going to be fed advertising, it should at least be informative. The Internet, once again, allows us to bypass ads conforming to 1950s market appeal.