Charles Apple

The New York Times today published another gloomy story on the state of newspapers. This one, however, seemed to have a little more depth to it than some.

Richard Perez-Pena reports:

The talk of newspapers’ demise is older than some of the reporters who write about it, but what is happening now is something new, something more serious than anyone has experienced in generations. Last year started badly and ended worse, with shrinking profits and tumbling stock prices, and 2008 is shaping up as more of the same, prompting louder talk about a dark turning point.

“I’m an optimist, but it is very hard to be positive about what’s going on,” said Brian P. Tierney, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News. “The next few years are transitional, and I think some papers aren’t going to make it.”

And here’s the nut:

In the last few days, several newspaper companies have reported weak December results, and they warned that January looked similarly bad and that the situation would worsen in a recession.

“The traditional cyclical factors are turning south at the same time as the structural factors,” said Ken Doctor, an industry analyst with the research firm Outsell. “It’s a very sobering time.”

Newspaper executives and analysts say that it could take five to 10 years for the industry’s finances to stabilize and that many of the papers that survive will be smaller and will practice less ambitious journalism.

Not fun stuff. But a must-read for us all. Check it out.

In a related issue, The Capital Times of Madison, Wis. — the afternoon daily; the more familiar Wisconsin State Journal is the morning paper, joined with the Times via a JOA – announced today that it will drop its print edition and go web-only, Editor & Publisher reports.

E&P’s Joe Strupp reports:

[Associate Editor John Nichols said] as far as he knows this is the first daily to make the full switchover.

“It is hard to be an afternoon daily newspaper in the world of 24/7 television and the Internet.” Nichols told E&P today. “It is hard to keep fresh and current.” He said the paper’s Web audience has soared in recent years.

The newsroom of The Capital Times. Photo
by Henry A. Koshollek/The Capital Times.
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Nichols said the 60-person news staff will likely be reduced through early retirements and other non-layoff attrition, leaving a staff of at least 40 to 45 to continue covering news.

This will happen in April. Read more in Editor & Publisher. Or, better yet, read The Capital Times‘ own story here.

Is this the wave of the future? Check out the bottom of Pena’s story in today’s NYT:

The paradox is that more people than ever read newspapers, now that some major papers have several times as many readers online as in print. And papers sell more ads than ever, when online ads are included.

But for every dollar advertisers pay to reach a print reader, they pay about 5 cents, on average, to reach an Internet reader. Newspapers need to narrow that gap, but the rise in Internet revenue slowed sharply last year.

“That’s another thing that made 2007 a watershed, the dawning realization that you can’t expect 25 percent annual growth in digital revenue,” [said Ken Doctor, an industry analyst with the research firm Outsell]. “Nobody knows just when this thing bottoms out, or how far down.”

Are you confused yet? I know I am.

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UPDATE

And to add to that confusion, the Times story — I linked to it above, but I didn’t read it closely because I had read and was quoting the E&P story — says the Times isn’t ending daily publication, just dropping back to twice-weekly publication. E&P has changed its story accordingly.

I could yank the E&P quotes and rebuild the second half of this post. But I have a day job — for the moment, anyway. So bear with me, please.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Industry woes, Newspapers, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.