It's like the sound the coyote makes when falling off the cliff in those old cartoons.
by Corey Alderdice
I wouldn’t want to be a newspaper right now. Other than the limited color scheme, short life span, the constant risk of being recycled and competition from techno-wonders like the Nook and Kindle, it turns out that the last few months have been killer for the folks in the print side of the mainstream media.
According to the New York Times (notice the hyperlink to underscore the point in play), circulation of United States daily newspapers is down by 10% over the last 6 months. The story is particularly bleak as one realizes that mainstays such as the San Francisco Chronicle, Star-Ledger of Newark and Dallas Morning News have lost over 20% of their readership in the last 12 months.
According to the Times, two major factors are at work against the industry:
The figures join a list of indicators of the industry’s health — like advertising and newsroom headcounts — that, after years of slipping, have accelerated sharply downward, as newspapers face the greatest threats since the Depression. Through the 1990s and into this decade, newspaper circulation was sliding, but by less than 1 percent a year. Then the rate of decline topped 2 percent in 2005, 3 percent in 2007 and 4 percent in 2008.
It comes as no surprise that more and more readers are turning to the internet for their news. When online, however, they are still visiting the journalistic mainstays in addition to new media outlets.
The Internet, where newspapers are generally free, has siphoned off circulation and advertising even as it made papers more widely read than ever before. This year, newspaper sites have had more than 72 million unique visitors a month, compared with 60 million in 2007, according to reports by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association.
The good people over at The AWL have crunched the numbers for some of the major dailies from the last 16 years to get a sense of just how quickly the ship is sinking.
The AWL revisited the issue on Tuesday with another chart. More important, though, is their list of links to semi-annual reports about the decline of the newspaper. The story, it seems, turns out to be old news.
That leads us to today’s questions: Do you still physically cut newspapers and magazines? Do you rely on printed newspapers and magazines other than that which comes off the inkjet in your squad room? By what date might we see the end of the newspaper in print?