Newspaper industry collapse intensifying

By Thomas Lifson

The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) has released the latest circulation numbers for big city dailies, and the news is almost uniformly bad for big newspaper publishers. The sole bright spot continues to be the New York Post, whose weekday circulation is up an impressive 7.6% to 724,748 in the six month period. The Post has a winning combination of a low cover prices and lively non-liberal writing. Oddly enough, no other papers seem to copying the successful tactics, something which ought to concern shareholders of the collapsing businesses.

Some key newspapers are in real trouble:

The Dallas Morning News hemorrhaged 14.2% of daily circ to 411,919.

The San Diego Union-Tribune slipped 6.5% to 296,331

The San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, daily circ declined 4.9% to 230,870

The Los Angeles Times lost 4.2% of its weekday circ to 815,723

The Chicago Tribune slipped 2.1% to 566,827

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported daily circ dropped 4.8% to 345,252.

Small circulation gains were reported by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York Daily News.

The New York Times, which has reported small overall circulation gains in recent years, thanks to the roll-out of new regional printing plants for its national edition, compensating for the loss of metropolitan circulation in New York, reported a loss of circulation this term, down 1.9% to 1,120,420.

When American Thinker first began writing about newspaper industry troubles three years ago, the newspaper industry was in denial about the trouble ahead, stock prices were still robust, and the consensus was that the industry's healthy margins would persist. Today, it is hard to find such optimism. The plain fact is that distrubution of nes content on dead trees is too slow, too costly, and not interactive enough. The other plain fact is that no business model yet exists for earning enough money from internet advertiusing to support the orignal reporting historically associated with newspapering.

Hat tip: Ed Lasky