An interesting article about the demise of the home delivered newspaper. Note it specifically refers to the 30 percent drop in home delivered subscriptions in Ann Arbor since the big change. The article is from Editor and Publisher who apparently aggregated it from Newsosaur.
Note to Booth: If you want to compete online you better do something about your goshawful MLive.com site and soon.
And then there is this not-so-good news about the business in 2012 as well.
Hat tip to anonymous FFE reader for the link.
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2 comments:
The most important info, IMO, is at the bottom of the post:
"The conundrum for newspapers is that print still produces more than 85% of total ad revenues, and this income is needed to fund development of increasingly complex digital offerings. During the last five years, however, digital ad revenue has replaced only 24% of what has been lost in print. Growth in digital may never be enough to overcome advertising revenue declines on the print side, and newspapers will have to find a new business model to make ends meet."
Reducing home delivery and driving people away from the print product and toward online - which, according to data is not replacing lost print revenue - is like shooting yourself to make money on the wound.
Won't work. Can't work.
Complete overhaul is necessary.
My God, what have they done...
The way I see it, this is similar to the scene in the movie Titanic. The ship has broken in 1/2 and the bow has fallen away. The stern bobs along for a while until it finally shoots straight to the bottom. Judging by the caliber of the people they kept and the caliber of the people they let go, Rose & Jack are taking their deep breaths. I don't think any amount of star studded management tours of the new "hubs" will save it.
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