|
Last week,
I was visiting a friend at his place of
business in Gainesville. I go there a
couple of days a week to help finish the
crossword puzzles he starts. We work the
puzzle in the Gainesville Daily Register
and the Dallas Morning News. The News
has two puzzles, the regular one and one
from the New York Times. While you might
think crossword puzzles are a frivolous
pastime, we think that it’s good for
one’s vocabulary, spelling and it’s good
exercise for the brain—something old
guys like me can use. But I’m not here
to argue about crossword puzzles; this
column is about the newspaper business.
While we
were playing with the puzzles, my friend
opened a letter on his desk from the
Dallas paper that contained an invoice
for the renewal of his subscription. We
were both astonished to learn that they
had doubled their subscription rates
from the previous period. They were
asking for $252.00 for the next six
months! My friend called them and asked
if the amount was, hopefully, a
misprint. The lady on the other end
assured him that it was correct. When
asked for a justification, she said the
paper had added a lot of new features,
but didn’t say what they were.
After
reading as much as I could on the
subject, I found that the News had
experienced an almost 10% decline in
circulation over the past year. The
decline in readership is a national
trend and Dallas is somewhere in the
middle. The New York Times circulation
is down 3.6%, while the Los Angeles
Times is down 6.55%. The only large
newspaper that has seen an increase is
the Wall Street Journal (0.61%), which
isn’t much, but better than the Houston
Chronicle, which is down by 13.96%.
Not only
are the papers losing readers, but they
are losing a lot of advertising revenue.
It’s advertising, rather than the volume
of papers sold that pays the bills.
Obviously, with the economy in a slump,
businesses have fewer dollars to spend
on advertising. With unemployment high,
the ads for jobs have hit a low spot as
well. Paid obituaries are about the only
thing that isn’t affected by the
economy.
Robert
Weisman, of the Boston Globe explains
what happened to his employer: “For
decades, advertisers relied on
newspapers to post job openings, sell
homes, and unload cars because the
medium reached a broad audience. But as
more people migrated to the Internet,
websites like Monster.com, Craigslist,
and Cars.com popped up to specifically
target those customers. Newspapers were
slow to recognize the power of the
Internet to erode, then splinter their
familiar and almost effortlessly
profitable business model.”
Apart from
losing readership, the Dallas paper
isn’t alone in raising subscription and
news stand prices—most of the large
newspapers already have.
This
appeared on the ABC News website back in
May: “The New York Times is raising its
newsstand prices for the third time in
less than two years as a severe
advertising slump forces readers to
shoulder more of the costs of producing
newspapers.
With the
latest changes announced Tuesday,
individual copies of The New York Times
on Mondays through Saturdays will have
doubled to $2 since July 2007.
The
upcoming increase, effective June 1,
will boost the Times' weekday price by
50 cents, or 33 percent, from the
current price of $1.50. The Times, which
has the third-highest U.S. circulation
on weekdays, increased the weekday price
by 25 cents during each of the previous
two summers.”
There has
to be a limit to what the market will
bear. How much is too much for a
newspaper? How long until their rising
debt drives them out of business? Maybe
they’re counting on a bailout from the
government. I don’t know. If you own a
business and your sales are in the tank,
do you think you can save yourself by
doubling your prices? I’m sure you
can’t.
Maybe the
day of the huge daily newspaper is going
the way of the horse collar and buggy
whip—something that has outlived its
usefulness. But as I said in a previous
column (10-28-07): While behemoth papers
like the New York Times, Washington
Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times
and the International Herald Tribune may
be headed for eventual oblivion; I don’t
think smaller publications will ever be
replaced by the Internet. The first and
most obvious reason is local content.
While one may read the big papers for
national and international news, the
local paper provides things not
otherwise available. Who died and when
is the funeral? Who got arrested,
married, divorced, or beat up outside a
beer joint? What happened at the city
council meeting? What’s on sale at Tom
Thumb or Wal-Mart this Wednesday? Who
has an affordable used baby bed? Where
are all the garage sales this Saturday?
Don’t forget local sports. The high
school team is a big deal in most
communities and people never get tired
of seeing their kids’ pictures on the
sports page. The same goes for other
school activities. You won’t find these
things in the big newspapers.
|
