Bacon's Rebellion

Who Will Gather the News? The Story Unfolds

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by

James A. Bacon
in

The Audit Bureau of Circulation, the notes the Saturday version of the Wall Street Journal, will publish its semi-annual figures on newspaper circulation, and the news is not expected to be good. Gannett, the nation’s largest publisher with 100 newspapers, has already said its circulation is down 2.5 percent from year-ago levels. Knight Ridder’s numbers are down 2.9 percent. The Tribune Co. warns that its readership is down 4 percent.

“More Americans are getting their news online; about 30 percent of adults turned to the Internet for news in 2004, compared with almost none in 1996,” the WSJ notes. Newspapers are scrambling to make sure that online readers get their news through the newspapers’ own websites, not filtered through Yahoo, MSN or other Internet-only sites.

But the Internet-based model is not as attractive as the traditional newspaper model. Yes, Internet advertising is up, but it doesn’t generate the same revenues per reader that print ads do. Newspapers may succeed at retaining readers, and they may succeed at generating more Internet advertising, but I am skeptical that Internet advertising will be sufficient to support the large news staffs we saw in the newspapers’ glory years.

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3 responses to “Who Will Gather the News? The Story Unfolds”

  1. B O B Avatar
    B O B

    Google has plans to compete with newspaper ads. You will see soon that Google will start local classified ads, in direct competion with the newspapers. CNN has just recently reported about this plan in the works. How effective will this be? I wouldn’t be surprised if this does not give newspapers a real challenge.

  2. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    BOB, Classified advertising is the most profitable part of the newspaper business. There once was a day when there were no effective competitors to the daily newspapers, but now competition is increasing daily — from weekly auto traders to Google, Monster.com and a host of online auto, dating and job-seeking websites. Newspapers and moving their classified ads online as well, but that doesn’t diminish the competition.

  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I would like to see newspapers – particularly small local papers add a blog feature to their web sites. It is a unique way to engage readers and get more out of a story.

    Also, newspapers should look at adding video content to their websites. The equipment is affordable and the programming is easy.

    Most small communities don’t have a TV station and they never will so they could fill a huge void.

    They shouldn’t try to compete with the evening newscast but there are certainly local issues in every community where extended coverage is warranted.

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