10 thoughts on “Newspaper Circulation”

  3. I’m guessing the USAT growth was due to hotel contracts.
    Some of the LAT losses are due to utter mismanagement and general idiocy. I expect the losses to subside to single digits after Sam Zell takes over, even if he’s a raving loony.

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  6. Do we have any sense of what the online readership numbers are doing?
    We have a subscription only to the Sunday NYT, but I read dozens of articles there at at the Washington Post over the course of a week, thanks to RSS feeds and to blog links. We have also never had the least interest in the local papers (their sales techniques BTW rely entirely on the “but don’t you want the coupons” argument) but we read their online sites daily. And I don’t see any argument for changing my behavior, really.

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  7. A lot of locals love to hate the paper in our new Texas town, and I’m starting to see why. To begin with, the editorial slant on controversial local issues is obvious even to a newcomer, and there’s little effort expended to give even the illusion of even-handedness. I was also not impressed by a story they ran recently on the mysterious glut of historic homes for sale in a high-profile neighborhood. Could it be taxes or crime, the reporter wondered before dismissing both possibilities. The article never mentioned pricing as an issue for this neighborhood, which is a genuinely lovely island bordered on one side by a street devoted to car lots, and on the other by a street crowded with pay day loan places and pawnshops. And then there’s the question of schools, which I don’t believe was addressed in the article, either. I certainly enjoy the local paper, but I don’t trust it.

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  8. We’re in our 50s and subscribe to the WaPo, NYT, and WSJ, delivered to our door every morning. We will probably keep doing this for the next 30 years, then die. It’s unusual behavior these days – I think we are dinosaurs, there won’t be any more like us coming on behind – though our #1 son is now religiously reading the sports pages in WaPo, and showed real interest in the elections, so maybe there is some hope.
    Paper is convenient – you can carry it on the subway. You can cut out a clipping which will needle your brother-in-law and put it in the mail (more dinosaur behavior). But yes, I think it is realistically over – there are substantial real costs to getting someone out of bed at 4 in the morning to drive around the neighborhood throwing papers on doorsteps (gasoline! trees!) coupons can be printed from the Internet, and I can send my bro-in-law lots of edgy stuff by emailing him the URL.
    The local-local paper survives on real estate ads, and those are in trouble as well – you will soon be able to search neighborhoods and look at much better portfolios on any center-hall-colonial- granite-counters-best-schools which may catch your interest than can possibly run in the paper.
    If there’s a solution it is probably in the area of micropayments. I would pay 20 cents to read an article if I were sure the subject was of interest. Salon has been getting ads based on requiring you to look at the ad to get into the article. But I think if my kid wants advice on whether to be a journalist or a locksmith, I will suggest locksmith.

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  9. “The local-local paper survives on real estate ads, and those are in trouble as well – you will soon be able to search neighborhoods and look at much better portfolios on any center-hall-colonial- granite-counters-best-schools which may catch your interest than can possibly run in the paper.”
    I think that’s already true. We’ve got realtor.com, trulia.com, zillow.com, redfin, ziprealty, etc. A home-seller who’s on the ball will put up literally dozens of photographs on the internet, and maybe even a virtual tour. An online newspaper can match that, but there’s no way that a print version can. Any decent online realty site will map the house for you and show whether the house backs to a freeway, and zillow will tell you the sales history. A lot of people are starting to do stand-alone websites for the houses they’re trying to sell. Newspaper real estate ads really don’t have a future.

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  10. We subscribe to the WSJ and the NYT. My husband and I fight over the WSJ, and the loser takes the Times.
    Part of the appeal comes down to ease of use. The WSJ devotes a significant part of its front page to summaries of articles inside the paper. To find the same information in the Times, you have to turn to the second page. I find the electronic version of the Times easier to use, in that I can quickly pull up the few articles I want to read that day.
    I also think that many readers want more facts, and less interpretation. The internet is leading the way on this. Someone reading on the web can glance at a list of stories of the hour, and decide which ones to follow. If you make it difficult to find the stories worth reading, many readers will go elsewhere.
    I also find that the sheer bulk of the NYT is intimidating, day in and day out. I have to recycle all that?

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