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.
