Back in the day when I wrote for Target Marketing magazine, my boss would always get a laugh out of journalists who trashed direct mail, forgetting that down the hall a room full of copywriters and order-takers were working hard trying to get subscriptions from offers their employers sent through the mail.

The modern-day version of this comes this week from two bloggers, Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget and Kara Swisher from the Wall Street Journal and BoomTown, both finding time to warn their readers of the demise of online display advertising. And yet a quick glance of their Web sites reveals a lot of banner, buttons, leaderboards and skyscrapers!

Look no further than the announcement today that Yahoo! likely will cut at least 1,000 online ad sales jobs. These folks obviously had aspirations to run AIG, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac someday. while Blodget and Swisher may have run out of things to write about.