Newsweek offering 12 percent of its staff an early retirement package due to advertising drought.

First, The Onion runs a funny piece about a man’s confusion over when to take down his American flags:

“I don’t want to be the first to take one down and look like an ass,” Wenger said. “When I put the flags up, I was saying, ‘I support America.’ If I take them down, some people will probably think I’m saying, ‘I no longer support America.’”

Then, today, the Wall Street Journal runs a piece about a man who picks up American flags that blow off peoples’ cars:

“I try to pick them up without getting out of the car,” says the 42-year-old environmental consultant. He has collected as many as 17 in one day, most during his hour-long commute on Interstate 95 between his home in Hobe Sound, Fla., and his office in Boynton Beach.

I’m not suggesting the Wall Street Journal reporter recycled his idea from The Onion or anything. All I’m saying is this looks a little Stephen Ambrosish to me.

Not only is Frito-Lay making online bets with its teen-marketing dollars (see “Bring back Bandito” below), the “music industry,” according to CNN, is also hoping and wishing that teens will decide it’s more fun to pay for music than to download it free.

Quote:

Music executives say they hope nascent online sales will help drive the next wave of growth, as CDs did in the early 1990s, replacing cassette and vinyl music collections.

Adage reports today that Frito-Lay is forgoing its usual Super Bowl ads this year. Rather it is tripling its online investment for Doritos this year in an effort to reach teens “where they live on a daily basis.” Trend story alert: within the next 72 hours, look for a variation of the following headline in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal: Guess which advertising medium is hot again? Another prediction: Look for the Dorito Superbowl X-treme Half-time show next year. Also, what about Fritos, Tostitos and other old-fart brands? Are they still on the Superbowl because that’s where plump middle-aged males live their lives?