Brad Robertson, Vice President of Business Development for the Des Moines Register, has an excellent blog entry about the need for newspapers to target readers. Yeah, readers. Not people lured by a DVD or a competition but people who want to read the newspaper. This is what advertisers want as well. I know from my own sales analysis of data from more than 100 newsagencies that competitions create a spike and maybe help a publisher meet audit goals but long term sales growth only comes from focusing on the product itself.