VIENNA, Va., Aug. 26 -- Newspaper advertising expenditures for the second quarter of 2002 totaled $10.9 billion, a decrease of 1.8 percent over the same period last year, according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America. Retail advertising spending was flat in the second quarter, off 0.1 percent to $5.25 billion. National was down 1.7 percent to $1.8 billion and classified slipped 4.1 percent to nearly $3.8 billion. Within the classified category in the second quarter, automotive ad spending led the way with an increase of 6.3 percent to $1.2 billion. Real estate continued to show strength, gaining 6 percent to $829 million, recruitment advertising dropped 20.9 percent to $1.1 billion and all other classifieds were up 2.7 percent to $669 million. "Though not quite into the positive territory we'd like to see, the continued improvement in these numbers gives us some cause for guarded optimism," said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. "We've seen significant improvement in monthly comparisons across a broad range of newspapers since the beginning of the year, and as the economy slowly expands, we expect this gradual trend toward improvement in newspaper ad spending to continue as well." For the first half of 2002, retail advertising expenditures were down 0.5 percent to $9.8 billion, national declined 2.6 percent to $3.5 billion and classified dropped 8.9 percent to $7.3 billion. Total ad spending in newspapers for the first six months was $20.6 billion, down 4 percent from the same period last year. For the first half of the year, automotive grew 5.5 percent to $2.3 billion, real estate increased 4.5 percent to $1.6 billion, recruitment declined 30.4 percent to $2.2 billion and all other classified gained 4.4 percent to $1.2 billion. "The drag in recruitment ads due to conditions in the current labor market is holding back improvements in the overall total," said NAA Vice President of Business Analysis and Research Jim Conaghan. NAA is a nonprofit organization representing the $55 billion newspaper industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Most NAA members are daily newspapers, accounting for 87 percent of the U.S. daily circulation. Headquartered in Tysons Corner (Vienna, Va.), the Association focuses on six key strategic priorities that affect the newspaper industry collectively: marketing, public policy, diversity, industry development, newspaper operations and readership. Information about NAA and the industry may also be found at the Association's World Wide Web site on the Internet(http://www.naa.org ).