Newspaper Industry Continues Rapid Decline
Posted on February 7, 2008 - Filed Under media |
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The economic slowdown, the housing crunch made life difficult enough for the newspaper business to succeed. But add onto that list the absolute free fall in advertising revenue and you have a major problem for the industry. The seriousness of this cannot be understated, and it only strengthens the argument that journalism is in a period of rapid change. Advertising revenue and users are flocking to online sources, while newspapers are now withering.Â
“I’m an optimist, but it is very hard to be positive about what’s going on,†said Brian P. Tierney, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News. “The next few years are transitional, and I think some papers aren’t going to make it.â€
Some highlights from today’s NY Times article on the increasingly dire state of newspapers include:
* Some of the largest papers — including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times — have lost 30 to 40 percent of their circulation in just a few years.
* Most papers have cut their newsrooms and simply done less reporting, especially overseas.
* It could take five to 10 years for the industry’s finances to stabilize and that many of the papers that survive will be smaller and will practice less ambitious journalism.
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