A turnaround in help-wanted advertising starting this spring reduced that decline to 2.4 percent through July.

The company cited weak help-wanted advertising as a reason for the decline.

To judge from help-wanted advertising, the demand for architects is greater than it has been in a decade.

Nonetheless, it will keep its advertising agencies, devoted to yellow pages and help-wanted advertising.

If that were not enough, the company also noted that an index of help-wanted advertising across the country "showed only a slight decline" recently.

One sign of strength in the industry during the fourth quarter was help-wanted classified advertising, which provides high-margin revenue.

Their report found that help-wanted advertising, a traditional indicator used to forecast economic conditions, declined slightly in the third quarter.

But the first wave of July results from newspaper chains shows that national and help-wanted advertising is still sluggish.

There have been efforts for years to create national on-line businesses based on help-wanted advertising, but some of the early efforts have failed.

The paper had previously announced plans to place its help-wanted advertising on the Internet.