Last week, the Newspaper Association of America revealed that not even it is immune from the pressures consuming its members. News emerged that the association is shutting the Newspaper National Network at the end of this month. The network was founded in 1994 to sell advertising on behalf of members and is estimated to have sold around US$3 billion in the past 22 years.

At the time of its demise, NNN was owned by 20 newspaper publishers, as well as the association. The reason it failed was that the costs involved were too much for the revenues generated. And there are suggestions that some publishers saw the cost of running NNN as a saving, not an investment, while others wanted to try and grab as much ad revenue as possible for all sources.

And over the weekend, news emerged in London that some of Britain’s biggest newspaper owners were looking at banding together to jointly sell ads. The Financial Times reported:

“The options being explored in conversations between senior Fleet Street executives include creating a single advertising sales operation as the industry faces the biggest crisis since the economic crash of 2008.Talks have so far involved the Telegraph Media Group, Trinity Mirror and Rupert Murdoch’s News UK — owner of The Times, the Sunday Times and The Sun, according to senior newspaper executives.”

Don’t they ever learn, or read?