Certain Newspapers Defying Subscription Decline
Circulation at the nation’s biggest newspapers isn’t getting any better:
- NY Times: DOWN
- Boston Globe: DOWN
- LA Times: DOWN
- Chicago Tribune: DOWN
- Washington Post: DOWN
USA Today and The Wall Street Journal garnered circulation increases that amount to statistical errors.
In the nation’s most vibrant newspaper market there are two glimmers of hope. The NY Post is up 7.6% and the NY Daily News is up 1.4%. While not listed I’m guessing the NY Sun enjoyed circulation gains too. The tabloids tabloid format and a more conservative approach (at least in the Post’s case) and probably a greater emphasis on local news are allowing the papers to kick the teeth of the Grey Lady.
Ed Morrissey wishes online readers were part of the papers’ numbers. That would be nice for industry observers. For the newspapers it would give them false security. Sure, they can lose readers in their dead tree editions only to make them up online, but they’ll lose financially. Classified ads are newspapers’ big money maker, but online Craigslist has brought the cost of them to zero. Papers won’t be making up the dead tree advertising with online ads. There’s too much competition; too many places for readers’ eyeballs to go.
I’m glad I’m not running a newspaper. While I think going hyper-local will stop some of the circulation bleeding it won’t make up for the lost classified ad sales. Papers need to find more revenue streams or they’ll have to cut staff to the bone or hope they make money off user-generated content by fooling average Janes and Joes to work for free.
UPDATE: News Corp. wants to buy Dow Jones for $5 billion. Both the NY Post and the Wall Street Journal are increasing circulation. A united newspaper front should scare competitors.
Regarding the online readers as part of those numbers, at least a few years ago, ABC required newspapers newspapers to charge at least half their normal subscription rate for the online version for online subscriptions to count in their numbers. I have no idea whether that’s been updated or scrapped.