Just when I’ve put everything away — the red pens, confetti, and grammartinis — it’s time to get it all out again! I can’t believe it’s March 4 already: National Grammar Day.

Established by the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, the holiday gives word nerds everywhere a day to be out loud and proud about our passion. My personal hero is hosting the holiday this year: Mignon Fogarty, of Grammar Girl fame. Visit her National Grammar Day site for a list of fun ways to commemorate the day.

So, hug your favorite English teacher — or, ahem, your favorite marketing agency editrix — and celebrate the joys of effective communication!

Advertising dollars fund editorial staffing and production costs for print media properties.

Advertising rates are based on circulation and readership.

Media circulation and readership has declined because media properties have made news and information available for free.

Advertisers are retreating from traditional print because of circulation decline.

Media properties now have to rely on their digital properties to replace lost ad revenue.

Advertisers are not simply reallocating print advertising budgets into the digital advertising space with those same media properties.

Reduced ad revenue forces media companies to cut staff which makes journalistic integrity vulnerable.

That impacts all of us as consumers of information.

The Wall Street Journal has had paid-for online subscription for years, with the New York Times working on a paid digital model to be revealed in the near future. One would assume others will follow.

So this brings us to a crossroads of sorts with both trade and consumer media. A few basic questions to consider are:

• Will it be possible for media outlets to “turn back the clock” and charge for online content successfully?
• For the advertiser, what is the value of an online subscriber versus the traditional print subscriber?
• Does the flexibility and customization of digital content allow media companies even more advertising revenue potential than they have had in the past?
• Are YOU willing to pay for news content online?

If your answer to the last question is “no,” you may want to think about the repercussions. Without money to pay people for objective news and information, we are putting critical, relevant platforms for our marketing communications at risk. One could go so far as to suggest the First Amendment (freedom of the press) would be taken to a new level with the public relying on unsubstantiated “experts” providing biased information. Personally, I hope traditional media gets this figured out in a hurry so we aren’t relying on “hobby journalists” for our information.

I’ve always believed that you get what you pay for, so I’m willing to pay a few bucks a month to maintain a certain level of intelligence and sanity.

At first I was surprised to hear that “1,” a compilation disc (of No. 1 hits) from The Beatles, was the best-selling album in the U.S. from 2000 through 2009. It was released in 2000, which gave it somewhat of an advantage — it had all 10 years to generate sales, and it did to the tune of 11.5 million copies.

So, like others, I asked, “What does this tell us?” That the music produced over the last 10 years is just that bad?

If the Mamas and the Papas, Janis Joplin, and Canned Heat had registered albums right behind “1,” maybe. But, of course, they didn’t. Although he didn’t have one individual album that topped the Beatles’, Eminem sold a total of 32 million albums during the same time frame, with two albums in the top five, behind ’NSync’s “No Strings Attached,” which topped 11 million copies. It’s not “Sgt. Pepper,” but someone’s buying it.

But, consider this: A countless number of artists and groups over the last decade produced albums/discs with certain songs, in a specific order, packaged and sold to be listened to together. At the same time, a record company releases a compilation of 40-year-old songs, not originally meant to be packaged or listened to together at all, let alone in a specific order. And the random compilation sells more. Why?

It’s no secret that consumers rarely buy into the album/disc concept anymore. It’s a shame, but they don’t. They don’t because they don’t have to. The “order” that an artist or group worked so hard on in putting an album/disc together just doesn’t matter to today’s buyers, especially now that they have options to select what they want, when they want it, mixed and matched however they prefer. Of course, I’m referring to iTunes and the like, but this type of option-buying can be attributed to a lot of growing purchasing habits.

So I got to thinking: In the past, the album/disc was a primary marketing channel for an artist or group to reach their fan base … In a way, their “campaign.” And if consumers no longer relate to that type of “order” or “packaging,” does this signal the demise of campaign marketing? We — as marketing communicators — work so hard to organize advertising, public relations, and other elements into integrated campaigns. But we’re marketing to a culture that may only be exposed to or select certain elements. Then we’ve lost that integrated approach.

On the other hand, music lovers are still buying a “package” from the artists and groups they follow. It’s just not the same packaging that became popular back in the late ’60s with some of the great Beatles albums and thrived until the iTunes age came along. Now, the packaging includes high-tech (and high-priced) theatrical concerts; reality television; satellite radio programming; and digital marketing, including the growing list of social media options. The list goes on.

At one point, the album was all we had. We listened to it over and over and over, song after song, hidden messages and all. Our exposure to the artists and groups we loved was relatively limited to what we could get from a 12 – 15 song collection that took weeks, months, and in some cases, years, to conceive and produce. Now, even the Beatles, almost 40 years since their breakup and with only two surviving members, are being packaged differently. And they’re finding a new fan base in the process.

So, campaign marketing may not be in jeopardy after all. At some point, the Rolling Stone “Greatest Albums of All Time List” may only include music 20, 30, 40 years old. But the artists and groups making new music today will reach their fan bases and have different claims to fame, all due to marketing efforts as carefully orchestrated as “Magical Mystery Tour” or “Rubber Soul.”

… But not on vinyl.

Some fun links:

• The Beatles’ top-selling album of the decade
• The recording industry’s historical numbers on top-selling albums
• The Rolling Stone “Top 500 Albums” list