Every major newspaper except WSJ is reporting losses, in some cases, severe. Where is this going?
Image: dagpic
These numbers came out yesterday from Editor and Publisher. The only gain made by any top 25 newspaper was a less than 1% circulation increase by The Wall Street Journal.
Check out some of the losses. SF Chronicle down by more than 25 percent.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL — 2,024,269 — 0.61%
USA TODAY — 1,900,116 — (-17.15%)
THE NEW YORK TIMES — 927,851 — (-7.28%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES — 657,467 — (-11.05%)
THE WASHINGTON POST — 582,844 — (-6.40%)DAILY NEWS (NEW YORK) — 544,167 — (-13.98%)
NEW YORK POST — 508,042 — (-18.77%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE — 465,892 — (-9.72%)
HOUSTON CHRONICLE — 384,419 — (-14.24%)
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER — 361,480 — N/ANEWSDAY — 357,124 — (-5.40%)
THE DENVER POST — 340,949 — N/A
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC — 316,874 — (-12.30%)
STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS — 304,543 — (-5.53%)
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES — 275,641 — (-11.98%)The PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND — 271,180 — (-11.24%)
DETROIT FREE PRESS (e) — 269,729 — (-9.56%)
THE BOSTON GLOBE — 264,105 — (-18.48%)
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS — 263,810 — (-22.16%)
THE SEATTLE TIMES — 263,588 — N/ASAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE — 251,782 — (-25.82%)
THE OREGONIAN — 249,163 — (-12.06%)
THE STAR-LEDGER, NEWARK — 246,006 — (-22.22%)
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE — 242,705 — (-10.05%)
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES — 240,147 — (-10.70%)
I’d be interested to see a side by side comparison of these numbers with corresponding increases or decreases of traffic on newspapers’ websites.
Questions:
How is this overall trend impacting journalism school applications?
Does anyone still subscribe to the paper? (My folks here get the Sarasota Herald Tribune)
Which major city (population over 5 million) will be the first to go without a daily newspaper?
I’m not sure exactly how I feel about all of this. I remember Eva Holland mentioning all the travel editors at Book Passage last year foreseeing this and thinking ‘well, now we’ll have time to write our books.’
I guess my thought is that this is all part of the evolution of the form. News needs to come from ever more local sources, and, in my opinion, be liberated of the classic ‘objective’ paradigm, moving instead towards a new ethic of material transparency.
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12 Comments... join the discussion!
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good to hear from you o.b.
how’ve you been?
i agree that a journalist’s work (i.e. reporting, writing, interviewing, etc.) and the medium through which this work is published / broadcast / distributed are two different entities, but i still see them as connected, not “disparate.”
i believe (albeit in very simplistic terms) modern newspaper production follows the model given to us by the industrial revolution (assembly line, hierarchy– boss >> managers >> workers) in both application and ideology. this includes the role of the journalist as a ‘cog’ in that ‘machine’.
the concept of hyperlocal news produced transparently (the writer is both in the story and transparent about his / her material connections) points to a new ethic, a new aesthetic, and a new economic model.
this ties into the conversation we had the other day about newpapers’ policies on ‘freebies’ – http://thetravelersnotebook.com/notes-on-writing/do-travel-and-leisure-style-no-freebies-policies-undermine-honesty-in-travel-writing/
how do we, as travel writers and journalists, find new ways to ‘monetize’, to sustain our work, when our newspaper jobs disappear?
how can we be ‘ahead of the game’, already creating something new and better?
in what ways can the “solid, long-standing journalistic, grammatical and educational principles” continue and evolve?
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David,
I agree that I’d like to see some comparison numbers showing the readership change on the corresponding websites – in order to see if its a change in medium (paper to online) or a change from conventional reporting (newspapers) to new media (blogs).
My suspicion is that it’s a little bit of both.
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allen,
thanks for the comment.
our team of ninjas is studying the analytics of the corresponding websites (all but 4 have sites) and we’ll follow up with this comparison in the next couple days.
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I’d be happy to give you guys a hand with the analysis as well . . . if your looking for some extra hands. It’s along the lines of what I do at my “day job”.
Keep up the good work guys. Love the recent content coming out of Matador!
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I’m interested to hear more about what you wrote here, “be liberated of the classic ‘objective’ paradigm, moving instead towards a new ethic of material transparency. ”
-ab
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hey alex,
thanks for asking.
i tried to give a quick answer but couldn’t.
i’m going to answer this in detail tomorrow or the next day.
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Over the summer, I started subscribing to the NY Times, and this despite the doomsday predictions that the Times would go down the tubes (and I, presumably, would not be refunded). I really do like reading the physical paper better than reading it online, though I just read that the majority of visitors to newspapers’ websites also have subscriptions of the “real” paper–interesting, no?
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i’d love an NYT subscription actually.
i still like reading newspapers too. in buenos aires i’d always go out on sundays to get a clarin and sit around reading it the rest of the morning. they always had (have) great literary supplements.
i didn’t really want this to come off as ‘doomsday’ either, more of just something to note.
i hope newspaper circulations go back up but i still feel like it’s all moving in a different direction.
can you send me the link to the article about the subscribers / web visitors correlation? sounds interesting.
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Yep- I’ll look for that link, David. Think it was from Media Bistro.
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If only this were happening to 24-hour television news.
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I dropped the subscription to the NYT, saved a lot of paper, and trees, and the oil to power the trucks to deliver and so on. I still read on line, but not just the Times. In some respects the Times has lowered it’s journalistic standards over the past few years.
The journal has no free website (you have to pay to read the whole article) and I believe most readers don’t know how to use a computer anyway. And remember the journal is a part of the Robert Murdoch empire, the op ed pages are like reading FOX for highbrows.
Good reading here.
http://people-press.org/report/444/news-media↵
