Is Philly next in line for trouble?

Didn't the Philly Inky report circulation gains in the last ABC report?
It seems like they did.
The problem with Philly is that Jesus could buy a paper in a large, metro market and not turn it around.

 

Jay: We are led to believe both papers have stemmed the circulation-loss torrent; the problem is ad money keeps shrinking anyway, with classifieds and real estate, etc.

 

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A team of managers at The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News has been appointed to oversee consolidation of some functions at the two papers in a bid to cut costs, a union official said Wednesday.

Leading the team is the Inquirer's co-managing editor, Sandra Long, who met with the union on Tuesday to talk about the changes, said Henry Holcomb, president of The Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia that represents newsroom and other staff at both papers.

The broadsheet Inquirer and the tabloid-size Daily News compete for news stories but share the same owners, presses and Web site. Holcomb said the union wants to make sure it can help owner Philadelphia Media Holdings save money without hurting the quality, personality and independence of the two dailies.

"The reader wants two editorial voices," Holcomb said.

The proposal to merge functions from the two newsrooms shows the severity of the newspaper industry downturn is making negotiable what was once sacrosanct.

First under scrutiny are the photo departments. The two papers may share photographers, Holcomb said, and the company is thinking about not renewing its lease on a fleet of cars photographers use.

Management is also looking at merging copy desk and other functions. Holcomb said there's work to do: The two newspapers aren't even on the same computer system.

Jay Devine, a spokesman for Philadelphia Media Holdings, declined to comment on what he categorized as "speculation."

Other newspapers have made similar moves.

In March, MediaNews Group Inc. decided to merge the Internet, copy editing and pagination operations of The Press-Telegram and Daily Breeze in California, and it has merged many functions of its other California papers. Mark Ficarra, the publisher of the Daily Breeze in Torrance, was named to the same position at the Press-Telegram in Long Beach.

The newspaper industry, no stranger to downturns, is reeling at the seriousness of the current decline. In 2007, overall advertising revenue fell by 9.4 percent to $42.2 billion, the largest drop since at least 1950, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Ad revenue fell 12.9 percent in the first quarter, led by a slump in classifieds.

Ad revenue recovered in the years following the second biggest dip — of 9 percent in 2001 — but newspapers may not see a similar rebound this time, said John Morton, president of media consulting firm Morton Research Inc. in Silver Spring, Md.

"Competitors for advertising are much larger and more successful" today than six years ago, he said. "So there's a very big question of whether newspapers, especially big city newspapers, will be able to recapture their classified advertising."

In April, the Audit Bureau of Circulation reported the average Monday-through-Friday circulation at The Philadelphia Inquirer was 334,150 for the six months ended March 31, down 5.1 percent from a year earlier. Average weekday circulation at the Philadelphia Daily News dropped 9.7 percent to 110,719.

In February and March, the papers raised their Monday through Saturday prices to 75 cents. The Inquirer had been 50 cents and the Daily News 60 cents. The Sunday Inquirer went from $1.50 to $1.75.

The newspapers laid off about 100 editorial and advertising workers in January 2007 and about 70 non-newsroom staffers five months ago.