The sky is falling on print newspapers faster than you think

Dude went to Wikipedia and pulled this up from the sources: Top 25 U.S. Newspapers for March 2013 | Alliance for Audited Media

That's how he got his top 25. The numbers for those rankings measure total circulation, including digital and branded, so papers like Las Vegas and Honolulu jump a ton. Heck, even the AJC has 75k branded in the 2013 numbers that were used to make the list.

 

But to answer your question, yes, some of those have. St. Louis' circulation isn't near what it used to be if what I've read is accurate.

 

Sounds like all newspapers are on the verge of quickly becoming non-profits.

 

He could have at least copied the complete numbers.

Having all his figures end in "000" tends to make one go "Hmmmmmm . . . "

 

Eh, it makes it a lot easier to read, and the precise numbers are within 0.5 percent of what's on the chart anyway. If the numbers are correct aside from the rounding, it's better information this way.

 

That's one hell of a correction.

 

Totally agree.

It's like bombarding a reader with Johnny JoeJoe averages 16.8 points and 11.9 rebounds for BFE High School when it's just as easy to say Johnny JoeJoe averages 17 points and 12 rebounds for BFE. Writers and editors need to realize that sometimes rounding off is simplified, easier to understand for the reader, and still correct.

I'm a newspaper guy and I knew the numbers weren't exact. But the graphic drove home his point and was much easier to read than had the numbers not been rounded off.

 

Or one hell of a job cooking the books?

 

The AJC is below 100K now? Wow. Just wow.

 

it is least surprising that large cities and national papers have lost the most circulation. Many of them are not that essential to their communities, or have been stripped in a way that they aren't as essential as they once were.

Who reads a newspaper for political news? No one. You read the newspaper's Web site. You read politico. You read, if you're a loser, a partisan blog that tells you just what you want to hear. You watch cable TV. Newspapers offer very little in this way.

And some - not all - of the pro sports newspapers are a day late and not nearly as interesting in covering those teams as talk radio, blogs, national sites, etc. Newspapers, stuck in some old model of letting the 30-year columnist write anything of consequence, if he or she actually pays enough attention to do so, lags behind the 26-year-old on talk radio speaking directly to his audience. Young voices have virtually no place at many newspapers; it was true when I was in them, and it's pretty much as true now.

Newspapers are getting crushed because they never were as interesting as they could be, they still aren't, other mediums are moreso. Newspapers generally insist on being the most boring of all news options. And by boring I don't mean "objective." I mean boring. A consistent and startling lack of excitement in the work.

 

Here's a fun one for us 40-plus folks: ask your younger colleagues what a "newsstand" is.

You might have to use it in a sentence: "Before boarding a plane, you could buy the local paper and a copy of Penthouse at the NEWSSTAND."

 

Do you really think a newspaper that's the slam-bangiest thing EVAH wouldn't be losing readers in the age of instant news?