Blue Mass Group

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Globe, other newspapers continue their death spiral

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Fairly shocking numbers, I’d say, even taking into account the effect of the Globe hiking its prices.

The Globe’s daily circulation fell 23.2 percent to 232,432 in the six-month period that ended in March, compared to the same period a year ago, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The Globe’s Sunday circulation dropped 18.8 percent to 378,949. Weekday circulation at the Herald fell 12 percent to 132,551, while Sunday declined 4.6 percent to 91,040.

The news was better elsewhere, but only in the sense that it was less terrible.

Nationally, average daily newspaper circulation fell 8.7 percent in the six-month period ended in March, marking an improvement from the April-to-September period when circulation declined 10.6 percent. Among the country’s biggest papers, daily circulation also tumbled: USA Today declined 13.6 percent; The New York Times, 8.5 percent; The Los Angeles Times, 14.7 percent; and The Washington Post, 13.1 percent. One bright spot: The Wall Street Journal, where circulation inched up 0.5 percent.

Interestingly, the WSJ is as far as I know the one outfit among those listed that does not offer its content for free on the web.  Coincidence?  I doubt it.

Website traffic continues to be solid, but as we all know, traffic doesn’t equal revenues, and online advertising continues not to pay the bills.  It’s hard for me to see how these kinds of declines are sustainable for much longer.  Five years, maybe – and maybe sooner, if another recession intervenes.

I’ll be interested to see whether, and how, the NY Times follows through on its proposal to start charging for some online content.  Sooner or later, something’s gotta give.

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Comments

  1. can come in many forms. I think it’s important to note that, at least as of a year or so ago, the Las Angelas Times was able to gain enough online ad revenue to actually pay for its news staff. As far as I know, it was the only paper in the country able to do so, so it’s obviously hard… but possible.

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    p>People need to remember that the vast majority of a paper’s staff aren’t reporters — if papers cut ties with that staff, they’d become much leaner and meaner, with the chance of actually affording to run with online ads.

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    p>That said, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that newspapers with strong online content lose circulation, but I’m not so sure that forcing people to pay for that content is a long-term path toward survival, either, because there’s so many news sources online.

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    p>If papers want to survive, they’re going to have to either make their online content profitable enough to keep a news staff going and focus on that, or if they do decide to continue to focus on on-the-ground distribution (and perhaps paid online content), ensure that their papers are delivering the kind of news that can’t be easily found online, for free, in other places — which amounts to really good local news.

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    p>The unfortunate thing is the Globe and other regional (and even local) papers have cut back so drastically on local news that it would take them a lot of investment and several years of effort just to become good at it again. But if the Globe wants to carve out a for-pay niche that people will actually pay to read, it’s going to have to be hyper local stuff that people just can’t get elsewhere.

  2. Another consideration is that there should be little question that the average income of WSJ readers is much higher than that of the Globe or Times or any other regional newspaper you can name. The WSJ also is serving more of a niche market.

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    p>I think there is no question that the prevalance of free online content and smart phones makes it harder for regional papers to survive, but I am not sure how much the WSJ’s business model would be transferrable to other types of papers.

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    p>Personally, I think that regional papers need to focus on quality reporting of city and regional news.

    • But WSJ also has specialty reporting.  Where the NYT went wrong, in my opinion, was by charging for opinions — which are free to have and plentiful online.  Time-consuming, skilled investigative reporting and news coverage is worth paying for…but only the Journal seems to believe that.

      • The WSJ does much less investigative reporting than the NYT. However, a lot of it is focused on state and city issues, which perhaps you are not interested in.

        • I meant to say that the NYT investigate reporting focus is more on state/city, not the WSJ.

  3. Why would anyone pay for paper when they can get the same material online for free?

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    p>The continued print declines, I think, are related to the rapid expansion of broadband, smart phones, iPad-type readers etc. That is a trend that is accelerating, so far as I can see, not slowing.

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    p>Moreover, as the web continues to develop, online increasingly offers advantages that paper does not. Hyperlinks, Facebook integration, and reader comments are three examples.

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    p>I agree with Ryan et al that this process probably will push content providers to extremes: national-global at one end, local at the other. That is a tough spot for the Globe and similar entities, but they should be able to pivot. First, however, they have to accept, if they haven’t already, that their future is digital. Developing a stable of local commenters like our pal Garrett from RMG is a good first step. They should have hundreds of writers like that, perhaps. Perhaps those folks could be free, with other content behind a pay wall.

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    p>The status quo is unsustainable.

    • but individual companies have to start picking one. Companies that continue to try to do a little bit of everything just aren’t going to work, because certain activities wind up with the papers eating themselves, and sometimes, when there’s too much going on, it’s just not a good thing.

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      p>There are basically a few models which I think could work. This is by no means inclusive and these ideas are by no means original to me, they’re just the ones I think have a good shot.

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      p>

      • Go digital, go lean — focus the staff on news, not distribution. If they don’t outright nix all distribution, these papers should put their offline content on an even footing with their online content and stop making people pay for it. Given that the profits from the sold papers really come from the ads anyway, this isn’t as big a deal as it sounds, but it only works if the papers become leaner and greener — by cutting down the sections and focusing on the content hard to find elsewhere (local and regional).
      • Go subscription. Since distribution is so expensive, offering free content online not only cannibalizes readers, but it doesn’t really save a full-scale daily any money… because the trucks still have to go out and those printing factories still need to churn, daily. If there’s a strong online presence, it would have to be for-pay, but even if it’s for pay — it’s still probably a sink to the company, since the company is still having to pay for all those trucks even though it would have fewer papers to deliver. One way to make a website available to subscribers, without causing that sink, would be to only give access to the articles on the web to those who are subscribing anyway, or at least make online subscribers pay more than print.
      • Go nonprofit. For local and community papers, this probably makes the most sense. These papers were never individually very profitable anyway, hence larger conglomerates buying them out like GateHouse. If it’s really just about keeping a local news presence, a nonprofit starts to make a lot of sense, because eliminating the need for these companies to make a major profit would be liberating for them.
      • Get out of the news business altogether. Don’t laugh, I’m serious. Most newspapers we know are much better at distribution than they are at the news. Their leadership is driven by that distribution and clearly doesn’t even understand what really sells — their news (ie all those Globe cuts to staff reporters over these years, making the newspaper all the more irrelevant to readers). Let others do the news for them and just distribute what they have to offer, as well as open their distribution networks to other papers, be they start-ups, indies or some specialty paper.

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      p>Note how each and every one of the major models I think can work for at least a good portion of the moribund papers out there involves them carving out a niche of good reporting that’s not currently widely available, or getting out of the business altogether. The days of people having one paper they look to for all their news is quickly ending is over. The end of the industry is not nigh, it’s just transitioning, a lot of the old guards will go away and some new ones will emerge… but what’s for sure is those companies that do not change will die.  

      • but I never understood the nonprofit angle as a solution.  Think the problem right now isn’t that print newspapers aren’t making enough profit, rather that they are losing money hand over fist.  If you’re facing a chronic deficit, not sure how the tax status of the controlling entity is going to make much of a difference in the financial viability of a newspaper.  Even charities who spend more than they take in tend to shut their doors over time.  DanK around to illuminate?

        • is that they will be tax-exempt and therefore can fundraise.  It’s the NPR model – sell advertising plus raise money directly from the public.  

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