Bad news
Just piling up the bad news for newspapers this week:
* Newspaper circulation continues to clog: “Industry sources who have seen the numbers tell E&P they anticipate that for the six months ending September 2006, top-line daily circulation will fall roughly 2.5% while Sunday will drop approximately 3%.”
* Newspaper advertising is declining: “Earnings from three big newspaper companies — Tribune Co., New York Times Co. and Belo Corp. — provided more dramatic evidence that print-advertising revenues have gone into decline after a long period of low growth. All three posted lower newspaper-advertising revenue in the third quarter compared with the year-earlier period, echoing results from most of the companies in the industry that have reported earnings in recent days. . . . Results in recent days have reinforced gloomy predictions coming from some analysts. Last week, Merrill Lynch cut its newspaper-ad revenue forecast for this year to flat from 1.2% growth and revised its 2007 forecast to a drop of 1.5%.”
* Those who thought they were saved from conglomerates and profit margins when they were bought by local owners were fooling themselves. Those papers are laying off: “The new owners of three former Knight Ridder newspapers announced layoffs, expected layoffs and abrupt changes in management yesterday as they painted a bleak outlook for the newspaper industry. . . ‘Newspaper publishers and owners across the country are saying that this has been the worst 90-day stretch that they have ever seen in the business,’ Mr. Tierney wrote. ‘They also universally believe that this reduced revenue picture will be a permanent part of the future of newspapers.’ ”
* There’s upheaval all over: NBC News cuts back. The Chicago Sun-Times appears to be for sale. The Toronto Star ousted its editor and publisher. Liberation’s future in France is in question.
That’s just one week.
Tags: Ad, newspapers, norg
October 22nd, 2006 at 1:03 pm
[...] As Jeff Jarvis notes in a post on Buzzmachine, it has been a pretty bad week for newspapers — just part of what has been a pretty bad year or two for the paper-based media business. Among the bad omens: [...]
October 22nd, 2006 at 3:20 pm
as a former journalist (as of last week) and a newspaper fan, it’s troubling to see how the industry is struggling to get on the web bandwagon. as a “pubilc service”, i a 5 “W”s post.
cheers, mark
October 22nd, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Isn’t it interesting that all of the former KR papers McClatchy unloaded are struggling, some horribly so (such as Philly), yet boosted by its KR acquisition, McClatchy revenue is up significantly?
October 22nd, 2006 at 8:35 pm
[...] Something has been bothering me since Adam Curry talked about media vs. technology on the Gillmor Gang. And I’m also left wondering why Jason Calacanis pumps up AdSense and yet gets labeled a “media guy”, or even calls himself such. I think it’s a dis-credit to himself. He’s much more than that. He’s an “Attention” guy. You see, media by it’s very nature can be disintermediated, and I don’t think any strategy that could fall prey to that is a good one. Is Google a media company. No. Media companies aggregate content makers and act as mediaries between the advertisers and the media consumers.(sorry to Doc, i don’t like the word consumer either) Google is doing more than that. They are an Attention clearing house. It’s what Jason might call an enabler, and it’s why the successful new companies we adore all seem to be doing just that. del.icio.us, grazr, edgio, top ten sourcesetc. Enabling an attention transaction to occur. Think eBay or Craigslist. OPML, not HTML. Tom Morris, not Morris, the cat. There is no enabling happening here, just intermediation. Jason’s latest venture is about enablement, so I think he’s on the right track. Paying people doesn’t change that, as long as a service is open. Attention enablers can’t be disintermediated. They can be replaced, but not disintermediated. I don’t come from the software industry. I much more relate to what Dave Winer calls a himself, a “media hacker”. And that’s what he calls Scoble too. It’s not really about technology. That is a means, not an end. Technology itself can be disintermediated or commodified. Soon, we will plug into technology like we do into electrical outlets. It’s happening now. So I say that the winning companies are not media companies or technology companies, but Attention companies. And if PodShow is a media company, it may succeed in the short run. But to last and grow, it will have to transform to an Attention company. So will Tribune, New York Times, Microsoft, Podosphere.com and the whole lot. Oct 22 2006 09:34 pm | RSS and gillmor and jarvis and newspapers and media and buzzmachine and winer and cluetrain and searls and stevegillmor and davewiner and jeffjarvis and OPML and microsoft and oldmediadoomsday and web2.0 and whathehellisallthisabout and Attention and scoble and blogging and del.icio.us and wordpress and grazr and myspace and arrington and mikearrington and gestures and gesturebank and tv and edgeio and sethgoldstein and tommorris and advertising and Halley Suitt and TopTenSources and calacanis and jasoncalacanis and adamcurry | [...]
October 22nd, 2006 at 9:39 pm
[...] Jeff Jarvis summarizes all the cutbacks and bad news at big media companies - in just the past week. advertising, newspapers, television [...]
October 24th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Newpapers need to change their mind-set about how they do buisness. A newspaper needs to be more than just a source information, it needs to be a bonding source for the community it serves. This means incorporating technology that brings companies and consumers together. At the NAA convention in Oklahoma this month there was a new solution called MyAdSource that could help with circulation and advertising. It is a partnership between several companies including: Matchbin.com, Arcasearch, Adify, and Fake Brains. They are geared toward helping gain back advertising that is lost to the internet and such sites as craiglist. There are some amazing products that they offer to help newpapers overcome this “gloom” everyone is feeling. One amazing product is the first statewide print classified search, which means people will actually see all the print ads when they search online. Also, they have this technology to create web communities that incorporate many features to submit ads for products and services. They may be the answer problems print newspapers are facing. The way papers are declining it is time to look at any solutions that can help.
October 25th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Finally I’ve found out the source of all those articles about News 2, Media 2 and other New Newspaper generation.
And I agree with all web 2.0 popularity and the need of establishment of new media and newspapers. Which would be submitted and rated by users, therefore only popular news would be on a the main page. There is a News 2 website (www.news2.ca), which has almost all concepts that were mentioned previously.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:31 am
[...] Een nieuw signaal komt uit de hoek van de dagbladuitgevers, uit de VS komt er nieuws over het in elkaar zakken van de advertentiemarkt voor kranten. Niet meer dan een voorbode van wat de traditionele tv-zenders nog te wachten staat. Ondertussen groeien de advertentieinkomsten van Google explosief en is het alleen nog wachten op de AdSense voor audio en video. [...]
October 26th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
[...] Mathew Ingram, who links to Buzzmachine's bad news post and indicates Editor and Publisher's article on continuously falling circulation in his own list of bad news for the newspaper biz from last week, links to another take on the Rob Curley article in Fast Company. Ingram summarizes the input from his friend and colleague Mark Evans this way: My friend and former National Post journalist Mark Evans has some of his own thoughts about how to reinvent the newspaper business, having spent the past couple of decades (give or take a few years) working for one. A few of his suggestions: experiment, focus on context rather than the quick hit, and hire younger staff who are willing to take more risks. Good advice. [...]
December 11th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
[...] Een nieuw signaal komt uit de hoek van de dagbladuitgevers, uit de VS komt er nieuws over het in elkaar zakken van de advertentiemarkt voor kranten. Niet meer dan een voorbode van wat de traditionele tv-zenders nog te wachten staat. Ondertussen groeien de advertentieinkomsten van Google explosief en is het alleen nog wachten op de AdSense voor audio en video. [...]