Newspaper Print Advertising Experiencing A Downward Spiral

As fast as brick-and-mortar bookstores are disappearing from the landscape, the dead tree newspapers are following along right behind. Here is Bloomberg with the details:

U.S. newspapers lost $10 in print advertising revenue last year for every $1 they gained online, a deeper loss than in 2010, as competition from Internet companies increases, a study by Pew Research Center found.

Newspaper revenues declined more sharply last year than in 2010 when publishers lost $7 in print advertising for every $1 generated from online outlets, according to Pew’s study entitled “State of the News Media,” which is published today.

“They’re continuing to lose ground to tech intermediaries,” such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. as well as to Apple Inc. and Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc., said Tom Rosenstiel, director of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, in a telephone interview. “The news industry has been fundamentally disadvantaged in this area,” he said.

The industry, suffering declines in print advertising, hasn’t been able to make up for those losses with digital revenue. Washington-based Pew’s study follows last week’s report from the Newspaper Association of America that revealed total newspaper ad revenue dropped 7.3 percent to $23.9 billion in 2011 from the previous year.

While online advertising among news groups increased by about $207 million, print advertising revenue declined by around $2.1 billion, Pew said.

Somebody ought to tell Tom Rosenstiel of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism that this trend does NOT mean anything positive for what his project is supposedly supporting. Newspapers facing rapidly declining revenues are going to be devoting far fewer resources to collecting and reporting the news, a trend that has been happening for a long time in American journalism but will now likely be accelerating.

I also found this little tidbit at the end of the article interesting:

Newspapers have slowly shifted their businesses online, led in part by the recent success of New York Times Co's plan to charge readers for access to its newspapers’ websites. Pew’s study estimates as many as 100 newspapers are expected to offer a digital subscription model in the coming months.

Times Co. has about 406,000 paying subscribers to its websites, including those for its namesake paper as well as the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune.

The Los Angeles Times, owned by Tribune Co., began charging for access to its website last month. Gannett Co. (GCI) said it would move 81 of its daily newspapers to an online paid model before the end of the year, with the exception of its flagship newspaper, USA Today.

“A growing number of executives predict that in five years many newspapers will offer a print home-delivered newspaper only on Sunday,” Pew’s report said.

In other words, the morning newspaper, that icon of American journalism for over a century, is about to become a thing of the past.


Bonus: "Sunday papers don't ask no questions...Sunday papers don't get no lies...Sunday papers don't raise objections...Sunday papers ain't got no eyes"