The New Orleans Times-Picayune May Reduce Frequency of Publication -- NY Times

According to the Newsasaur blog newspaper advertising in newspapers has fallen 50% since 2005. Retail advertising has held up the best and now accounts for half the advertising dollar. Bluntly, a newspaper is now frequently an envelope for the retail inserts.

And a lot of retailer advertisers appear to really need newspapers. J.C. Penney has tried to adopt a "fair and square" pricing model so that they don't have to spend as much promoting sales. It has been a disaster so far. Same store sales were down 18.9% in Q1.

But retail advertisers usually don't need to be in the paper every day. They advertise their sales events once or twice a week. So it makes imminent sense to cut distribution to three times a week. And if need be a publisher can cut circulation prices to try to hold onto readership. Would you get a larger circulation base from charging $12 a month for a daily or $3 from a tri-weekly. And think industry advertising revenues will only decline marginally. The retail advertisers will still be there.

One thing is certain. If this strategy works for Newhouse it will spread like wild fire.

 

But you just told your advertisers that print isn't that effective. That's not what you meant to say, but you did just as if you splashed the news across that hideous yellow header.

 

Calling this a strategy is an affront to the word.

It won't work.

It will kill the paper.

 

Through all the glorious reader comments ripping this lunacy, one stands out (paraphrased)

I suspect nola.com was popular because it was backed by a respected daily newspaper. Now what will you be?

 

Not to mention, the money for a lot of the investigative reporting that brings people to the website and to buy the newspaper, comes from the big newspaper ads. Without the newspaper, where is the money for that?

 

You clearly do not know his market.

 

Somebody did the math on the circ figures, and thanks to Newhouse about 500,000 people in New Orleans and Alabama will be without a daily paper.

 

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/business/media/in-latest-sign-of-print-upheaval-new-orleans-paper-scaling-back.xml

75 percent penetration. Over 1/3 of households with no internet access. And they're chucking it away. In my fever dreams, I wish someone would revive the States-Item nameplate and blow their asses out of town.

 

Actually, he does. He used to work at a sister paper and it operates under pretty much the same circumstances mine does. The difference in the market sizes is probably about 1,000 people.

 

If the President of the United States dies on a Friday or Saturday, the flagship newspaper of Gannett Co. won't have an edition on it.

 

Yeah, I know. Wish you were wrong.

 

How many of those people do you think are currently taking a daily paper?