“… an unprecedented and sustained deterioration in newspaper ad sales has brought profits in Philadelphia and Minneapolis dangerously close to the point that the new owners won’t be able to remain current on their loans.”
“… an unprecedented and sustained deterioration in newspaper ad sales has brought profits in Philadelphia and Minneapolis dangerously close to the point that the new owners won’t be able to remain current on their loans.”
and this, its not because the music stinks.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/01/29/tech-u2.html
I wonder if the Winnipeg Free Press is hoping that the Dippers will bail them out??
This collapse is absolutely essential if the newspaper media is to ultimately survive. These papers could be picked up for cheap and have a renewed mandate to provide readable, compelling content rather than journalistic pablum that wraps around the classifieds.
In a similar vein:
Lame Stream Newspaper Sales Plummet
And For Good Reason
http://www.bakersfieldindependent.com/news/view_article/3
any wonder why pulp and paper mills are closing?
did conrad black sell out before the crash?
quebecor didn’t
I took the liberty of forwarding the article via e-mail to Rob Granatstein, the editor of the Toronto Sun – it came back as undeliverable, system error… the Sun’s editor marked it as spam
What seems to be missing from Newsoraur’s post is just how disconnected from the “Main Stream People” the news print world has become. As they move ever more into “advocacy” journalism, people get turned off by the centralized “We know what is best for you” attitude that has been emanating from the news print/TV cabal (particularly up here in Canada) for many years now.
Could it be people are tuning out and not turning the news print page because they are tired of being treated as morons to be preached at and indoctrinated, and it’s not so much a failure of the business plan it’s self.
I am one of those people that now gets 90% of his news and world information from the net and only goes to the TV and most news print to confirm they are wrong and I am on the right track getting the information I require to make an “informed” opinion.
The news media in North America has become it’s own worst enemy by dumbing down/advocating it’s position under the guise of news. If I tune into talk show radio 9 times out of 10 the host will divulge their leanings (other than the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation or Bill Good at CKNW) thus allowing me to make a decision if that person will add anything substantive to my position of “getting” informed. Not so the print/TV media these days which has a very condescending opinion of it’s viewers/readers.
“Worst case, and no one is saying the worst case is upon us, some newspapers could go out of business. Then, where would we be?”
I’ll bite on that question. Glad to see most of them gone. What do most of these local papers do but grab stuff from the wire services, send a few hacks to local political and budget meetings where they most often get it wrong, have the lamest local spittle spewing lefty numbskulls on their op/ed pages and charge a fortune for a classified ad that you can do for free on Craigslist.
If half of the worst to mediocre papers were gone tomorrow, the local news and sports would get re-organized on the web. It would happen, the vacuum would get filled by some local bloggers/entrepreneurs. There just aren’t that many households without the internet anymore who would suffer from an information blackout.
They can’t die fast enough.
No newspapers allowed in our house…except when we need to paper-train our puppies!
McDonald’s have stacks of The Province newspaper on their counters every morning and the workers insist that you take one “they’re free!” People thumb through while waiting for their McMuffin then leave without the paper.
They can’t give this stuff away.
I bring home the local broadsheet once in a while. Its free when I buy a coffee at the local cafe and it makes a pretty good liner for my budgies’ cage.
The only time I get a WPG Freep … is when I gas up at Domo and they put one in my hand.
Posted by: Glen at January 29, 2008 5:20 PM
Glenn pretty much summarize why the supposed ‘news organizations’ have a problem.
What is rather surprising, these groups will not see the forest because of the trees.
Take Vancouver for an example, they have three newspapers (one national), a TV station and likely a radio station run by the same company. In the newspaper business they have no competition.
Glen, sorry about misspelling your name.
OMMAG
I get the WPG Freep delivered to my door every day, and I wonder why. The only reason I come up with is my wife likes doing the crosswords.
Craigslist is the cause of the decline in classified advertising.
CEO of Viacom was on Bloomberg yestersday. Did y’all know that Viacom is the only big media company that isn’t bleeding red ink through 2007 into this year? Even Viacom’s stock topped out at $44 in late December and bounced off $37 yesterday.
Just to put things in perspective, $33 was the lowest its ever been, and that was mid-2006. Ow. That’s gotta hurt.
And this company is -making- money. Imagine the New York Times! Or Gannet Newspapers…
“I get the WPG Freep delivered to my door every day, and I wonder why.”
I get it so I can ogle the Black Rod’s ass kicking that he gives them every 3 or 4 weeks.
Geez – I get the National Post six days a week, and enjoy it every day. I think they’re pretty even-handed in their coverage – they criticize the Tories from time to time and praise them at others, while they’re pretty hard on the Liberals for the most part, but offer them praise when warranted. They have an OK sports section, and Arts & Life offers a lot of interesting material. Finally, their business section contains the longest running satirical column in Canadian financial history – Terence Corcoran’s. I can hardly ever read it without bursting into laughter.
I spend a lot of time on the net, but I can’t take my computer on the bus (or to the john, for that matter). Try doing a crossword puzzle or sudoku on-line – it doesn’t work. And the diversity of opinions on the op-ed pages is slightly wider than those at SDA. So, while I would never give up blogs as a necessary counter-weight to MSM, I’m still going to read the Post.
I too like the Post, and only the Post. All the rest suck. I make a point of buying one from a box or store several times a week. It can be hard to find even here in downtown Vancouver.