Hello, Washington Post? Guess where your ad revenue comes from

Amidst much advance hoo-ha and look at us, the Washington Post launched Capital Business this morning.

It's a weekly tabloid supposed to cover the business of the DMV (District, Maryland and Virginia). Now, the Post has had a terrible business "section" for years. These days, it's just a page or two.

It's early Monday and I don't feel like writing a lot until I get some coffee in me, but I went through the thing three times and didn't find a word about advertising or public relations companies. I'm sorry, but there are a lot of us here.

Oh, there's a story about "Virginia Wine pairs with Cuban cigars" a feature on the "Bradley Town Center" shopping center, which is NOT named "Bradley Town Center", and a nice pictures of three guys at the Bristol Herald-Courier (wherever the hell that is) celebrating a Pulitzer.

But anything about any of the ad agencies or public relations firms that cover the area? Nah, we'd rather read more about Ben's Chili Bowl.

You know, it's really easy to sit here on the sidelines and say they oughta to this and they oughta do that, but why doesn't the Ad Club try to raise the visibility of the industry here? A once-a-year Advertising Week modeled after the same thing in New York won't do it. And neither the Post nor the Business Journal seem to care much one way or another.

There are some very good agencies here doing some very good national work. (Adworks for The Cleveland Clinic, Arnold for Amtrak and The Bahamas and Smith+Gifford for the Virginia Lottery come to mind. Plus whomever it is that does those ads for the Pier House Resort in Key West.)

But you'd never know it reading the Washington Post.



(If you're a prompt reader here, it was probably a confusing morning. I thought I'd accidentally deleted this work in progress. What I actually DID was publish it. Sorry.)