Earth Date Log: 42908 – Daily papers continue the struggle

What more is there for daily newspapers to do? Even publications as large as the New York Times report less than satisfactory revenue streams.

"    Total revenues decreased 4.9 percent to $747.9 million from $786.0
million. Advertising revenues decreased 9.2 percent. Circulation
revenues increased 1.9 percent and other revenues rose 7.2 percent." New York Times First Quarter Report 2008.

Ad revenue is a major part of a newspaper’s revenue stream because the only other facets of revenue come from circulation and subscription. It is becoming more and more acceptable to retrieve information from free, credible sources online versus a weekly newspaper subscription or daily circulation sales. Unfortunately print news is heading down a rocky road. Boulders are coming up in the distance. Loyal readership is still a factor in paper survival, however the problem now becomes attracting new readers. Let’s make it happen the old fashioned way! Quality writing brings visitors to papers and it brings readers to the digital news portals.

Another entry inspired by Jay Mundy on constant watch for papers in peril.

[I have more to say, but class is starting soon. Back in flash!]

April 29, 2008 | No Comments »

E.W. Scripps and New Mexico say farewell to the Albuquerque Tribune

SO it goes …

Another newspaper succumbs to the digitalization of our mainstream culture. Ink and paper are finding it more and more difficult to survive the harping onslaught of computers and the world wide web. In this post, I continue my series on the crises facing traditional print newspapers. This time is the Albuquerque Tribune [see title^].

The Las Cruces Sun-News, a newspaper in Las Cruces, NM and subset of the MediaNews Group conglomerate based out of Denver, CO, reported the final day of the Albuquerque Tribune. The Tribune used to be one of Albuquerque’s highest circulated daily running about 42,000 issues distributed in the late 80’s. As of early 2008 the paper was down to a little over 9,000 issues. Its legacy had lasted almost 9 decades, being founded by Carlton Cole Magee as Magee’s Independent in 1922. The E.W. Scripps Company, an American media conglomerate, moved to sell the Tribune as of August 2007. If no buyer was found the paper would be officially shut down early 2008. As of February 23, 2008 the Albuquerque Tribune has issued its last edition with the headline, "Goodnight, Albuquerque".

E.W. Scripps Company owns 18 papers across the United States as well as several television networks such as HGTV, DIY, FineLiving, and the Food Network [of which I am a BIG FAN]. Apparently, Wikipedia reports that it has closed 3 newspapers based in Ohio,

as well as 6 other papers in Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, PA, and CA. It is a shame that print newspapers are slowly being put out of business by the increasing digital wave. I would hope that more print companies would embrace the digital age and instead of closing the paper, move the majority of it to the internet. Making a print newspaper available as an ‘Email Daily’ would possibly be an effective measure to combat falling distribution numbers. A few of the closed papers such as the Cincinnati Post have joined with others to put up News Websites where one to two former print papers could continue their local reporting. Methods such as these would cut down on having to layoff reporters and editors, as well as saving a good amount of capital from running printing presses.

February 26, 2008 | No Comments »

A Daily Dies in Cinci

The Cincinnati and Kentucky Post daily newspapers have printed their final pages this past Monday. December 31, 2007 marks the death of a 126-year-old daily newspaper reducing Cincinnati, OH to a "one-paper town", in terms of dailies of course. The Cincinnati Post was an afternoon daily newspaper barred from becoming a morning daily, as well as being barred from Sunday, by its owner and chief competitor The Enquirer. The two daily papers maintained separate news rooms and staff, but the Post was corralled by its afternoon-ONLY restriction and was therefore set on a course to which it could not recover from.

On a positive note, The Kentucky Post will continue to hold its name and methods by reporting via the web at KYPost.com.

There seems to be fewer and fewer printed newspapers as we move forward. The web is the new wave carrying news to consumers everywhere. It is fast and global which makes web news the premier outlet. As I’ve said before there is still a huge loyal following of printed newspapers in the world.

Can we hold a healthy balance between printed news and electronic news?

This shift affects many people and industries. As newspapers die off, people lose their jobs in printing presses and newsrooms. Paper manufacturers and deliverers lose business.

I like receiving my news online. Its convenient and cheap. I do not think that papers will completely disappear for a long while.

January 4, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Political bias in the media, The Fairness Doctrine

Again, Mr. Jay Mundy points us to some more interesting numbers on today’s mainstream media.

Rasmussen Reports states that based on the results of a recent series of polls the Associated Press, local news stations, CNBC, and MSNBC are all seen as having a liberal bias by their viewers. They also state that based on some earlier reports NPR and CNN also lean to the left. Fox News jumps far to the right in political bias. The article also reports: public opinion was such a major force in the immigration debate that now interest on Capitol Hill has peaked in reviving the Fairness Doctrine.

I think that a lot of us realize that such media does present some information with a political bias. But as it is, this could be a lot more valuable than inducing the Fairness Doctrine on the nation’s media. "The Fairness Doctrine was a United States FCC regulation requiring broadcast licensees to present controversial issues of public importance in an honest, equitable and balanced manner", in essence restricting our freedom of the press. The regulations were brought up in federal court as a violation of our First Amendment rights in 1969.

As with the economy and business, healthy competition has the ability to bring up new and innovative information. If that competition within media were to be locked, a result of the Fairness Doctrine, the potential for discovering new information in politics and media would be seriously hampered. I am a big proponent of protecting and preserving our Constitutional Rights and would not like to see these regulations enacted on our public communications. We have a right to know anything and everything about how this nation is being governed and used. I do realize that there may be some restrictions of information in order to protect us from our enemies which in SOME cases, not all, is appropriate.

More to come on this topic. Off to work. Cheers!

July 25, 2007 | No Comments »

Newspapers unpopular with young people? Well, DUH!

[posting has been sporadic lately on account of work and other time consuming factors- I expect that as soon as August 1 rolls around I will be able to dedicate more of my time to finding good topics to present to all of you. Thanks so much for reading. It means a lot to me.]

A good friend of mine, Jay Mundy of jaymundy.com, presented an article to me which made some findings regarding newspaper readership. Editor & Publisher Journal brings us this piece which takes into account ages of readers and what they tend to pay attention to.

Interesting; the internet seems to have not taken teenagers away from newspapers. The majority of teenagers do not read the news but get it from television and buzz. This makes a lot of sense. Television has played a major part in the development of Generation X and Y. [SADLY] Paper news caught the attention of some but not all.

I find that the article presents some generalities worth realizing but no solid trends. As Editor&Publisher states, it is "a relatively dim picture".

July 22, 2007 | 1 Comment »
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