New circulation figures again ugly

Those Miami Herald numbers are staggering. Didn't that paper used to go 300,000 on weekdays and 400,000 on Sundays? I wonder how many other big-city papers took that big a fall.

 

These circ numbers are inflated because ABC changed the underlying methodology. Poynter has an explanation that I don't really understand.

But the San Franciso Chronicle, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Boston Globe and the Dallas Morning News are all down close to 50%. There are probably more but those jump out at me.

And for the Chicago Tribune to be down to 437,000 is something I find staggering.

 

Count me among those floored by the Globe's decline.

This is what happens when you cut the paper in half, double the price and run off your core readership. There. What happened to newspapers in 20 words. Where's my six-figure consultant salary?

 

I'll need to see if I can find a link but I saw an article not that long ago that said college newspaper readership, the actual print edition, was through the roof on campuses.

when people have an investment in their community, they want to know what is going on and will read the paper to find out. it is the one thing that gives me hope.

 

This looks like it's from 2008, but I'm not sure.

http://www.marketingvox.com/college-students-addicted-to-college-newspapers-039002/

"Despite declines in mainstream newspaper readership, college newspapers are an integral part of students' lives, with over three-quarters (76 percent) of them saying they have read their college newspaper in the past month, according to a recent Alloy Media + Marketing study, MarketingCharts reports."

but there might have been something more recently, because this blog

http://www.paperviews.org/2011/04/20/college-newspaper-readership-to-the-rescue/

Appears to be recent.

"This 'stroll down memory lane' came to mind as I read of a recent readership survey of more than 1200 college students at 550 colleges across all 50 states conducted by Alloy Media & Marketing showing that 76 % of the students had read their college newspaper in the past month."

 

Think of what the circulation numbers will be after the Baby Boomers die out.

Newspapers will practically seek to exist and 2007-2011 will seem like the good old days.

 

More likely, kids like doing the crossword puzzle in class.

 

Or what happens what happens when a new technology-the Internet-usurps your biggest asset-your local monopoly over the delivery system. That-and thus ads, real estate listings, and, as Craigslist showed, classifieds-drove newspaper profits, not editorial content. Once you eliminated competitors, the high fixed costs made it difficult for any new competitor to challenge an incumbent, regardless of the quality of the publication. (Inner-city traffic, in fact, helped lead to the demise of afternoon newspaper.)

Truth is, newspapers don't really make sense as a product in an Internet world. There really isn't any need to bundle most of the information they provide in one place. Readers don't need the vast majority of what newspapers produce. And it's not just that quality has declined as staffs have been cut. Large numbers of readers probably received the newspaper because they wanted TV listings, box scores, movie times, ads, etc.-you can easily get that elsewhere now. The Internet rendered even services like stuffing your paper with AP copy of foreign and national news irrelevant.

 

So glad I hitched my wagon to this star.

 

And that's not to say newspapers don't still present content worth reading, or that people aren't interested in reading it. It's more about the fact that the content mix of newspapers was designed around now-antiquated delivery systems. Aggregation along those lines is no longer necessary-or the best way-to provide content to readers now.

 

And yet, when BIG news happens, people run out and buy papers. And yet, newspaper Web sites have strong and growing traffic. People DO want bundles of disparate information, and most people are too lazy to do their own bundling (some aren't, as social media proves). Brands matter, and newspapers have their brand name right in the first four letters of the word. Let me put it this way. A century from now, I have no idea what media will be used by most people to get news. But I'm willing to bet that some media called the New York Times will still be around and Huffington Post won't be.

 

I was a at a new media symposium last week. Just let this sink in...
By late 2015, mobile viewership of the internet will be greater than desktop viewership. Seems unfathomable...until you think about it for a minute.