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The decline of newspaper revenues and circulation
- Thread starter Mark Roberts
- Start date
2008 was a big turning point for newspaper revenue because that was about the time the economy started to drop. If you remember real-estate tanked, property values dropped and everybody became concerned about the future. It was natural for print to start to loose business. Yes social media was rising at the time but as I remember ad sales in general through all mediums was dropping in 2008. The drop triggered big changes in the operation of newspapers including those down here in SW Florida. A very impressive local paper owned by a national company who had invested millions in a new building and new press just before 2008 because things were so good sold to another national chain who then sold to a third chain in less than a year. Big changes occurred. The paper dropped employees sold the press moved printing to a central location North and content suffered. Less local stories and more national and regional stories that could be adapted to appear to be local. In a year the number of local stories in a Sunday edition dropped to eight then six. The size of the paper decreased and the great local reporting for the most part went away. I'm of the belief that the loss of content was as big a contributor to the demise as was the advertising money available. Radio went through the same thing at the same time.
I don't mind waiting because I'm in the habit of actually reading the paper as much as a week later ever since I went through the previous week's papers during college. I still do that with the actual Charlotte Observer I get delivered to select articles (usually just obituaries these days) or photos I want to keep. Then I read the papers after that. But it's annoying that news that happened on Monday is reported on Wednesday.
To relate this to broadcasting, the entire WBTV 6:00 newscast, which I record for the weather but might watch if there's an interesting story, was the death of four police officers. WCNC has "Jeopardy" at 7 but my recording started with the end of their 6:00 newscast which pre-empted the network news. Not one word in the next day's Charlotte Observer.
To relate this to broadcasting, the entire WBTV 6:00 newscast, which I record for the weather but might watch if there's an interesting story, was the death of four police officers. WCNC has "Jeopardy" at 7 but my recording started with the end of their 6:00 newscast which pre-empted the network news. Not one word in the next day's Charlotte Observer.
There is (was?) something to be said for a lot of news in one eye-ball full....especially during a meal alone. One could glance over the titles, read the first line or two, or the whole article without doing a thing other than occasionally turning the page. Now I get bacon grease on my smart phone display. 
When I subscribed to the electronic version of a major city's daily up until recently, I would choose the version of display that showed me the whole page of the 'paper' so I could do the same.
Note the past tense on subscription. When it went to something like 25 bucks a month, I was gone. Not worth it. Add up your monthly / yearly online-related subscriptions sometime.....Google storage, Dropbox, app subscriptions, weather subscriptions, Netflix, Hulu, sports channels, and many, many more. It's a lot of money and I'm on a quest to just pay for what I really want.
When I subscribed to the electronic version of a major city's daily up until recently, I would choose the version of display that showed me the whole page of the 'paper' so I could do the same.
Note the past tense on subscription. When it went to something like 25 bucks a month, I was gone. Not worth it. Add up your monthly / yearly online-related subscriptions sometime.....Google storage, Dropbox, app subscriptions, weather subscriptions, Netflix, Hulu, sports channels, and many, many more. It's a lot of money and I'm on a quest to just pay for what I really want.
A city of 800,000 should have a newspaper that actually has all the news about that city. Instead, I find out about Charlotte stories from suburban newspapers.
Does that mean that such was the only story covered-- nothing else?
I fast forwarded through the whole thing and that's the impression I got.
Seems like you also had something where there wasn't even a mention of sports either (which has happened before, with Hurricane Gloria, which was a big weather story in '85 (the 9/26 late edition of WPVI Action News was Gloria, and nothing else)...
Online, free classifieds wiped out newspaper revenues by an average of 40% when CL took hold, after 2000 when CL spread to most major cities in the US. So, basically, you had one company of 50~ employees potentially wiping out the employment of probably tens of thousands (maybe 40K or so, according to some estimates).
Then you had the "legacy media" thing, still affecting newspapers. Going online doesn't really make all that much of a difference in their vitality, unfortunately, as -- according to Pew -- online readership has continuously dropped post-2016, and revenues aren't exactly keeping newspapers in the black. If online revenues were doing that, the LA Times wouldn't have been losing tens of millions of dollars every year and laid off 110~ employees last year.
Last year (2023) I think around 150 local newspapers folded in the US (2.5 papers a week, according to NPR), an increase from 2 per week that folded the previous year (2022). That's a fairly large increase of newspaper failures in just one yearr. 30% of newspapers in the US have folded since 2005 -- probably thanks to the WWW and the online, free classified ads effect. During the same time period (2005-2023) 48K journalists lost their jobs.
It's the internet/social media/TikTok-ing of journalism. In the mid 80s, there were an estimated 250K-350K journalists in the US, which at the time had 220 million people. Today, there are 46K journalists in the US (acc. to the BLS), and the population in the US has increased to probably over 330 million people.
Then again, the spread of podcasters, influencers, social media style "news" sites has spread. So really, I think we're seeing the redefinition of journalism. And internet, online newspaper operations -- which really are the only valid direction for newspapers to take -- so far aren't delivering on the promise of keeping newspaper operations alive and vital.
Then you had the "legacy media" thing, still affecting newspapers. Going online doesn't really make all that much of a difference in their vitality, unfortunately, as -- according to Pew -- online readership has continuously dropped post-2016, and revenues aren't exactly keeping newspapers in the black. If online revenues were doing that, the LA Times wouldn't have been losing tens of millions of dollars every year and laid off 110~ employees last year.
Last year (2023) I think around 150 local newspapers folded in the US (2.5 papers a week, according to NPR), an increase from 2 per week that folded the previous year (2022). That's a fairly large increase of newspaper failures in just one yearr. 30% of newspapers in the US have folded since 2005 -- probably thanks to the WWW and the online, free classified ads effect. During the same time period (2005-2023) 48K journalists lost their jobs.
It's the internet/social media/TikTok-ing of journalism. In the mid 80s, there were an estimated 250K-350K journalists in the US, which at the time had 220 million people. Today, there are 46K journalists in the US (acc. to the BLS), and the population in the US has increased to probably over 330 million people.
Then again, the spread of podcasters, influencers, social media style "news" sites has spread. So really, I think we're seeing the redefinition of journalism. And internet, online newspaper operations -- which really are the only valid direction for newspapers to take -- so far aren't delivering on the promise of keeping newspaper operations alive and vital.
I don't know if any other universities student papers have done this, but the University of Iowa's student paper bought two local weekly papers earlier this year:
https://dailyiowan.com/2024/01/29/daily-iowan-acquires-mount-vernon-solon-newspapers/
https://dailyiowan.com/2024/01/29/daily-iowan-acquires-mount-vernon-solon-newspapers/
Expenses, still.
When a 16 page daily newspaper in actually newsprint format on a weekday is $3, the $15/month wanted for the on-line version doesn't seem quite as bad.
Okay here's something to chew on: Should one consider those who post false or misleading information and opinion online while calling it news, still considered journalism?
Last I heard the New York Times' move to podcasting and investigative reporting has paid off, with subscriptions at an all-time high.
We'd agree that small-town periodicals don't have the resources of a NY Times or Washington Post, so making a comeback by being active online isn't an option.
I'm sure it wouldn't-- you'd probably get more online than shelling out the quarters (or any money) for just a smattering of print.
It seems the smaller the town, the more healthy the newspaper. It's corporate papers (such as our local that was once daily but now 2x a week and is 80% content from elsewhere) that have hurt larger small town circulations. Publishers in small towns I talk to want to be 100% online. Eliminate postage and printing and you sliced your monthly expenses quite a bit and make a reasonable paycheck possible. Paper and printing costs have gone up just like everything else.
Locally owned and operated, a town 40 miles away has a twice a week that runs about 32 pages per edition (easily 60% ads) plus a free news sheet at various spots daily (50%-75% ads) for a town of 10,000 and a county of 50,000. Next county over from us, a 16-28 page paper that is at least 50% advertising cleans up in a county of 16,000. These are Texas counties, so they tend to be heavy on square miles versus population. To compare the two examples, our town of about 18,000 with 50,000 in the county has about 8 pages twice a week and a circulation of under 1,000 as a corporate owned. 80% of paper is from a regional fulfillment center and local office gets a certain number of column inches for local in each edition. Even sales is primarily online selling non-newspaper related products from third parties per the salesperson I know quite well.
Circulation is down in big and small towns but from those I know, the smaller the town, the more remote the town is, the healthier the newspaper is. There's one paper in a town of about 200-225 with only about 400 in the 1,700 square mile zip code. It's half an hour to the area's shopping hub. They sell about $400-$500 in column inches (ads) a week and have about 260 subscribers down from about 400 a decade ago. Considering the local zip code has only a dozen businesses and about $3 million in retail sales and everybody is known by name, I ponder how the weekly paper manages 12 tabloid size pages 52 weeks a year!
Locally owned and operated, a town 40 miles away has a twice a week that runs about 32 pages per edition (easily 60% ads) plus a free news sheet at various spots daily (50%-75% ads) for a town of 10,000 and a county of 50,000. Next county over from us, a 16-28 page paper that is at least 50% advertising cleans up in a county of 16,000. These are Texas counties, so they tend to be heavy on square miles versus population. To compare the two examples, our town of about 18,000 with 50,000 in the county has about 8 pages twice a week and a circulation of under 1,000 as a corporate owned. 80% of paper is from a regional fulfillment center and local office gets a certain number of column inches for local in each edition. Even sales is primarily online selling non-newspaper related products from third parties per the salesperson I know quite well.
Circulation is down in big and small towns but from those I know, the smaller the town, the more remote the town is, the healthier the newspaper is. There's one paper in a town of about 200-225 with only about 400 in the 1,700 square mile zip code. It's half an hour to the area's shopping hub. They sell about $400-$500 in column inches (ads) a week and have about 260 subscribers down from about 400 a decade ago. Considering the local zip code has only a dozen businesses and about $3 million in retail sales and everybody is known by name, I ponder how the weekly paper manages 12 tabloid size pages 52 weeks a year!
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Then add in the loss of real estate advertising and you were talking about nearly half of a newspaper‘s revenue. Nobody can survive that kind of loss without having to make huge reductions in the news gathering and editorial staff.
So the issue is that much if not, most of the revenue has gone elsewhere, younger people don’t wait for a printed newspaper, and don’t look for an equivalent online, but, instead, find news in all the familiar new media locations.
Years ago on several occasions, my stepbrother took me to watch over a quarter million copies of the Cleveland Plain Dealer being printed on massive presses. What is so impressive is the amount of personnel and the investment of money in the staff and equipment to put out a huge daily paper.
Neither do us geezers. I can read the Android app for The Arizona Repugnant in the john just as easily as I could the dead tree edition delivered to my door 20 years ago. It'll be more current, as well.
A printed newspaper's content is obsolete the moment it's distributed. The online version of that paper can be updated in real time as news events require. They're competing with TV, and have to be as up-to-date as both local TV newscasts and their related websites/apps.
But most are not up to date, and do not update editions.
My local paper has a deadline of around 5 PM PST. That's because the paper is printed in Phoenix, a 5 hour truck drive to the Palm Springs area. So to get it out for local distribution by around 4 AM, the presses have to run around 7 PM or so. They can't run later, as the larger papers printed there have priority.
Online, the only thing that changes during the day is an occasional rectification of facts. The spelling and grammatical errors of the 7th and 8th graders who seem to write it don't get corrected.
I take it yours is The Desert Sun (the paper of the Palm Springs area [have seen that one before]).
Yes. Should be called the Desert Moon as it does not shine as bright as it used to; it was once a very good local newspaper.
I think also that mine should really be called the Greenville Olds (rather than the Greenville News) because it's just about the same old, same old every day (same old political stuff that's been hashed to death before, sports that's way behind schedule, no opinion pages, and very few features to speak of).
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