So long, Sporting News Today

What they mean by publication this time around, I have no idea, but this may have come down to the idea that more eyeballs reading for free equals more advertising dollars and more total revenue than subscribing eyeballs and smaller ad dollars. Good luck to 'em.

 

But isn't that growth entirely due to the AOL partnership?

 

I'm assuming because in the past 12 months they bought all the traffic from AOL.com. Let's see if they can continue to grow their audience.

 

So appropriate that they lead this letter with a major dangling modifier.

 

"It's been a pleasure playing with you, gentlemen."

 

Proves Gary actually did write the letter.

 

I never really got into it. I would rather buy a print product then pay for a print product online.

 

And I believe many feel that way, and it's what makes online publishing a difficult proposition. I do not know if that's going to change, either.

 

In the end, isn't this the major catch-22 of the business. People used to be willing to pay for a print product.

But they're not nearly as willing to pay to read things online -- as though it's supposed to be free if it's on the Internet.

And now that there's so much to read online, millions no longer look to buy the print product.

In some ways, newspapers did this to themselves. They thought the advertising dollars would pour in from the Internet. They've since learned otherwise.

 

Ah, but they still think it's a viable business model. And so the bleeding continues.

 

And you would have thought that the instant publishers discovered that online revenue would not match print revenue dollar-for-dollar (which many publishers, including mine, expected), free news would have been yanked. More than a decade later, here we are, swimming in red ink spilled into a pool of declining circulation.