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Monday, October 30, 2006
Circ. drops for dailies
Ouch. A new report shows the big dailies are still losing ground. From Editor and Publisher:
Circulation at the [LA Times], according to the FAS-FAX released this morning, took one of its biggest drops ever with daily down 8% and Sunday down 6% for the six-month period ending September 2006. Many other major metros followed suit and the industry took an average daily hit of 2% to 3%.
The San Jose Mercury News, for example, is off 9.4% daily and 9.7% Sundays.
Yikes. Here's a list of the Top 25 papers. Philly Inquirer's down 7.5 percent. Portland's Oregonian is down 6.8 percent. NY Times down 3.5 percent.
The NYT is losing my Sunday subscription, too. Just got a letter saying the price is going up to $6.30 an issue for delivery of Sunday only. Why would I pay that when I can get the thing at the gas station down the street for $4.90? Although, last time I called to cancel my subscription, the NYT guy was so panicked he gave me a discount rate. Wonder if that'll work this time?
Incidentally, our circ. at 7D is not down. But then, you don't have to pay for our paper.
Not that I'm gloating. I understand the frustration with the big dailies, but I'm not convinced that this is a healthy trend for our democracy. I guess the best we can hope for is that, if/when newspapers perish, something better will come along to replace them.
October 30, 2006 at 11:06 AM in Media/Keeping an eye on the competition | Permalink
Comments
it will be a great day when people wake up and realize most corporate-owned media outlets put varnish on the BS they call news. they haven't been worth reading in decades. Blogs and you tube are the new information channels. A couple years more, and people will realize just how filtered our mainstream news really is.
Posted by: random vermonter | Nov 1, 2006 8:15:18 PM
We can attribute many reasons for the paper dailies' circulation shrinkage, but I think it's really quite simple. People spend their time differently now than in the pre-Internet, pre-150 cable channel days. Less time in front of paper, more time gazing at screens.
My real concern with continued loss of circulation is the possibility that newspaper organizations reduce in-depth worldwide reporting.
With some notable exceptions, bloggers do not provide sourcing of information.
I dream about a team of top-notch reporters choosing to create a news wiki that could be reliably edited by un-biased altruistic persons.
...dream on, Dave.
Posted by: David Usher | Nov 3, 2006 8:37:24 AM
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