Newspaper Ad Revenues Dive; No Media Self-Examination Evident

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.

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.