Monday, November 5, 2007

Demand for newspapers continues to decline

From Editor&Publisher
...for 538 daily U.S. newspapers, circulation declined 2.5% to 40,689,617.
  • The New York Times was down 4.51% to 1,037,828
  • The Washington Post was down 3.2% to 635,087
  • The Wall Street Journal was down 1.53% to 2,011,882
  • However, USA Today posted a gain of 1% to 2,293,137.
In response, daily newspapers are cutting back circulation in outlying [high cost] areas. Newspapers are also merging editorial deparments to take advantage of obvious scale economies and merging their adveritising to provide a more attractive vehicle to national advertisers.

2 comments:

  1. What is USA Today doing that the NYT, LAT, WaPo, and WSJ aren't to run counter the trend of declining circulation? Is it bizarre or revealing that the most pedestrian paper is currently the most successful?

    Additionally, will this trend of decreased circulation inspire the print media to reevaluate their current advertising driven business models? Is the era of the printed daily newspaper concluding as advertisers can measure online ads success via click rates, while there is no metric to measure garish full page ads for Macy's in most daily newspapers?

    Finally, does the fact that the NYT, WaPo and LAT have been intellectually negligent by allowing their OP-ED page stances to frequently influence their regular news coverage contribute the to loss of confidence in their products?

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  2. With the rise of the Internet and the ability to instantaneously retrieve information has greatly contributed to the decline for newspapers. The biggest newspaper outlets has for years tried to steer traffic to their websites to no avail. Individuals would rather have access to a plethora of news at its disposal instead of relying on one source.

    Print revenue has suffered severely from declining advertising sales because this too as covered much larger audience when advertising on social media or web sites. Craiglist, news channel applications and search giants such as Google has strategically revamped how people are reached.

    I haven’t purchased a newspaper in years. The only time I might buy one is to see local ads during the holiday season but these too are plastered all over the Internet with constant live updates.

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