In any other industry, when revenues fall steeply, those in charge take at least a casual look at the quality of their product, and try to get a grip on whether it's meeting consumers' needs and expectations.
But that never seems to happen in the news business.
True to form, the New York Times's Richard Perez-Pena devoted over 850 words to the latest developments, and had nothing to say about product quality:
For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse. This year is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.
Ad revenue, the primary source of newspaper income, began sliding two years ago, and as hiring freezes turned to buyouts and then to layoffs, the decline has only accelerated.
Story Continues Below Ad ↓On top of long-term changes in the industry, the weak economy is also hurting ad sales, especially in Florida and California, where the severe contraction of the housing markets has cut deeply into real estate ads. Executives at the Hearst Corporation say that one of their biggest papers, The San Francisco Chronicle, is losing $1 million a week.
Over all, ad revenue fell almost 8 percent last year. This year, it is running about 12 percent below that dismal performance, and company reports issued last week suggested a 14 percent to 15 percent decline in May.
“Never in my most bearish dreams six months ago did I think we’d be talking about negative 15 percent numbers against weak comps,” said Peter S. Appert, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. “I think the probability is very high that there will be a number of examples of individual newspapers and newspaper companies that fall into a loss position. And I think it’s inevitable that there will be closures in this industry, and maybe bankruptcies."
Geez, even an investment analyst won't talk about the media-bias and media-incompetence elephants in the room.
In fact, in the face of calamitous failure, the arrogance lives on (bold is mine):
“As long as we’ve got content, we’ve got something nobody else has,” said Mr. Morton, of Media General. The industry’s challenge, he said, is to keep expanding that audience, “proving to the advertiser that we, in fact, are the right link so that he can have his conversation with the customer through us.”
There's plenty of fair and balanced content elsewhere, and the supply is growing. With attitudes like Mr. Morton's, the cliff can't be far away.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
—Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters
Editor at Large
Comments Policy
Newspaper readership has been
June 23, 2008 - 16:25 ET by j. frank wilsondeclining for decades (since the 1950's). Periodically, right wingers try to tie the decline to the bias of the newspaper's writing. It doesn't make sense.
For example, the internet has ruined much of the classified advertising - and that has been the traditional backbone of newspaper ad revenue.
At one time San Francisco had something like 7 daily papers - 4 or 5 in the morning and the rest in the evening. Name a major metropolitan evening newspaper. Liberal bais did them all in? Please...
"For example, the internet
June 23, 2008 - 17:11 ET by celator"For example, the internet has ruined much of the classified advertising
- and that has been the traditional backbone of newspaper ad revenue."
You are correct. Newspapers know they lose relatively few readers because of perceived bias, left or right. They usually deny the bias, or don't much care about it anyway.
But the impact of the Internet on their classsified ad revenues has been the leading reason most newspaper chains consolidate or shut down some newspapers completely.
Most newspapers have debt structures based on assumed anticipated revenues. Those revenues are declining dramatically (mostly from declining classified ads) , and are not going to increase any time soon, if ever. The banks want their money, so to speak. Most folks are surprised to hear classified ads are the cash cow of newspapers.
Our own state-wide major newspaper said exactly that (re declining ad revenues) in a commentary last Sunday. Declining ad revenues is the reason they put themselves on the sales block.
Not so fast...
June 23, 2008 - 17:23 ET by Clear thinkerWe have a local paper that is small but has grown like crazy. How did they grow? They gave up on politics altogether. They saw their sales drop everytime there was something controversial cpncerning politics in our area. At the same time they saw an increase of letters to the editor that had people screaming about the paper being bias in favor of the Dems. The paper decided to try a few issues without politics and like magic their sales went up.
Now the paper covers human interest stories, High School Football, a Police Blotter and a lot of fluff. Their ad revenues has sky rocketed!
of 45 Communist Goals for America http://www.nationmakers.com/com_goals.htm
There are local papers
June 23, 2008 - 21:03 ET by celatorThere are local papers that have changed, grown and are prospering. But the trend overall is not so rosy. And there is, of course, a connection between readership levels and ad revenues. If you take a look at Editor and Publisher magazine, the statistics they write about are bleak overall.
Part of the move away is caused not only by biased content, but perhaps more so, the convenience of the Internet makes it a prime source of news for a lot of us. We don't have to wait any more for the newspaper to plop on our doorstep at 6 am. We simply go online and read what we want, when we want, as much as we want. Some newspapers are trying to marry their newsrooms with an Internet access news source, but most don't do it well yet.
For sure, the times they are achanging.
But declining ad sales
June 23, 2008 - 17:31 ET by sublight68But declining ad sales follows the fall off in readership, not the other way around. Businesses aren't buying ad space because they can no longer reach a big enough segment of their target audience.
So why the fall off in readership? The bias and incompetence of the MsM, coupled with the availability of alternate news sources, would seem to be in large part to blame.
The MSM IS a major reason for the Internet's growth
June 23, 2008 - 19:01 ET by needleIndeed!
In fact if the MSM had been competent and scrupulously unbiased (as opposed to cashing in their reputation in the service of promoting their agenda), they could have shown up the Internet as a big bunch of amateurs and yokels. As it is, the MSM has in effect been a source of potent fertilizer greatly powering the growth of the Internet as an antidote for the MSM!
The MSM is light years from recognizing this, which ties indirectly into my tag line: Impunity always invites worse things.
Impunitas semper ad deteriora invitat.
only after the MSM got soooo far off base
June 23, 2008 - 17:50 ET by wizardjrI, like many around me and of my family, kept trying to maintain a subscription to the local papers. We have two local major dailies and a couple of national dailies. One by one we all gave it up, even the Sunday Edition. It was, in each and every case due to the blatant bias and poor/wrong reporting. That's why we all went to radio and the internet.
The papers here are giving away tons of copies just so they can record them as circulation, for which they charge the advertisers. I don't know any 'drop' that will even take it back as free.
Frank I disagree
June 23, 2008 - 17:57 ET by jefflebowskiI gave up the Dallas Morning News because its content was sooo heavily slanted to the left and minorities. I refuse to support liberals
Jeff Lebowski
www.angrywhitedude.c...
Well, Frank, frankly I
June 23, 2008 - 22:55 ET by jdhawkWell, Frank, frankly I don't give a damn the reason. All I know is everyone of them bleats the liberal point of view to the exclusion of all else. I won't read them and apparently I am not alone.
Save the day, Frank, double up on your WaPo subscription. Oh! Wait a minute . . . What about that saving the planet thing and the folly of cutting down trees to produce newsprint?
Quite a dilemna you've got going there. Hope it works out . . .
Newspapers, particularly
June 23, 2008 - 23:05 ET by BigSky1970Newspapers, particularly those outside of the major metro's KNOW they lose a certain segment of their readership, and they adapt their reporting accordingly to those who remain readers.
Newspapers like the NYT, USA Today, or the WaPo don't really care about any of that, because they aren't heavily dependent on classifieds like the medium and small market newspapers do, to exist.
While I attended college in 1989, I subscribed to the college town daily newspaper's Sunday edition because of the Sunday comics, the sports page, and the boatload of coupons and sales fliers. I didn't care about the news.
For the hardened Socialist
June 24, 2008 - 07:26 ET by UnsanePeriodically, right wingers try to tie the decline to the bias of the newspaper's writing. It doesn't make sense. And why not, frank? The San Antonio Light went under in January 1993, well before the Internet became widespread. The Light was a horrible newspaper whose folding I did not mourn. Well, except for one thing. It just made the crappy Express-News that much more crappy, which is what happens when you lose competition.
A combination of crappy writing, shoddy journalism and Leftist bias does the trick. But hardened Socialists like you just won't admit it...
Res tantum valet quantum vendi potest.
Unsane
June 24, 2008 - 17:28 ET by RESTLESS 1Just last night the Express News called the house wanting me to renew my subscription, (I let it lapse almost a year ago when they fired Leo Garza, the conservative cartoonist and kept the liberal, that was the last straw), and I told them when they asked why they why I wasn't interested that it was because of their liberal bias. The internet wouldn't take nearly as much readership away if the news was balanced from the papers. It is very relaxing to sit and read the days news while having some coffee and/or breakfast. But, oh well, there is always a book.
"This
liberal would be all about socialize -- uh, uh, would be about
basically taking over and the government running all of your companies."-Maxine Waters 2008
They're good at lying
June 23, 2008 - 16:29 ET by tony23They've been lying to the public for so long that they've become unable to distinguish the truth.
Plus, keep in mind that to a liberal, it's always someone else's fault. In this case, it's GOT to be the stupid readers who are too dumb to realize how important newspapers are. After all, we're ENTITLED to have our business be profitable, and it shouldn't matter how poorly we run it, or if we're producing a product people actually want.
How long do you think it will be before the newspapers start calling for some sort of bail-out...
<double post>
June 23, 2008 - 17:31 ET by sublight68<double post>
Kansas City Scar
June 23, 2008 - 17:54 ET by KC BeachI used to love to read the paper every morning but the KC Scar got to be so biased I could not give them another dime. Now every time they call to try to get us to re-subscribe my wife asks them if they have changed their editorial board yet. Followed by call us back when you do and we will happily re-subscribe.
The whack jobs won't change
June 23, 2008 - 18:15 ET by Barrack"When you don't recognize you're falling while continuing to move forward, you still go 'splat' unless you pull the cord."
-anonymous
www.benbarrack.com
You people give yourselves
June 23, 2008 - 18:40 ET by Biff McCainYou people give yourselves way too much credit for the newspaper slump.
Most everyone likes to read the truth about the unpopular President.
http://www.mcall.com...
"Burn that mother down." -- Jimmy Ellis
You liberals are real assholes.
June 23, 2008 - 18:56 ET by RESTLESS 1I would like to put all liberals on trial for the murder of millions with the banning of DDT, the precipitous withdrawal from Vietnam, and especially put Clinton on trial for the deaths of over 3,000 American citizens due to his negligence irt terrorism during his 8 years in the White House. There are many other crimes against humanity the liberals are guilty of, but this would be a start.
"This
liberal would be all about socialize -- uh, uh, would be about
basically taking over and the government running all of your companies."-Maxine Waters 2008
Restless,
June 23, 2008 - 19:03 ET by BlondeDittos.
David Gregory, do you know which damn network you lie for? ~ Uncle Jimbo, @Blackfive
The party's over
June 23, 2008 - 18:58 ET by pocomocoThe MSM are doing all they can do to make the loony-left happy in an effort to shore up their falling revenue hence the day-to-day inanity being spewed.
Unfortunately for them, the left is not large enough to save them from their steady march toward oblivion. Not even George Soros or Ted Turner can save them.
I predict that after November many of the MSM will be hanging ‘30’ on their front doors.
This reminds me of the
June 23, 2008 - 20:41 ET by Kenny BunkportThis reminds me of the probably apochryphal line attributed to Henry Ford. "You can have any color you want as long as it's black." Ford almost went out of business with this mindset.
The print media have forgotten that ultimately they must deliver a product that the people will buy. For years now, they have put out their slanted news and expected people to buy it.
Sure people have gone to the internet for convenience, but ignoring content is burying your head in the sand. Most people go to the internet because they know they can get alternative viewpoints and news without an agenda (or at least a different agenda).
Another example of focusing on the lesser issue, because the big issue is too difficult or unpleasant to tackle.
Ala Monty Python's The Meaning of Life "people aren't wearing enough hats.":
[Large corporate boardroom filled with suited executives] CHAIRMAN: ...Which brings us once again to the urgent realization of just how much there is still left to own. Item six on the agenda: the meaning of life. Now, uh, Harry, you've had some thoughts on this. HARRY: That's right. Yeah, I've had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and, uh, what we've come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One: people are not wearing enough hats. Two: matter is energy. In the universe, there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio, as orthodox Christianity teaches. It has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved, owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia. [long pause] BERT: What was that about hats, again? HARRY: Oh, uh, people aren't wearing enough. CHAIRMAN: Is this true? EDMUND: Certainly. Hat sales have increased, but not pari passu, as our research initially-- BERT: But when you say 'enough', enough for what purpose? GUNTHER: Can I just ask, with reference to your second point, when you say souls don't develop because people become distracted,... [rumble] ...has anyone noticed that building there before?
Sorry the editor ran that
June 23, 2008 - 20:45 ET by Kenny BunkportSorry the editor ran that together. Oops.