NEW YORK The Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX report for the six-month period ending September 2006 released this morning confirmed yet again that major metros are struggling to show growth. The losses are steep while the gains are meager. In fact when looking at the list:
1. USA Today: 2,269509, (-1.3%)
2. The Wall Street Journal: 2,043235, (-1.9%)
3. The New York Times: 1,086,798, (-3.5%)
4. Los Angeles Times: 775,766, (-8.0%)
5. The New York Post: 704,011, 5.1%
6. Daily News: 693,382, 1.0%
7. The Washington Post: 656,297, (-3.3%)
8. Chicago Tribune: 576,132, (-1.7%)
9. Houston Chronicle: 508,097, (-3.6%)
10. Newsday: 413,579, (-4.9%)
11. The Arizona Republic, Phoenix: 397,294, (-2.5%)
12. The Boston Globe: 386,415, (-6.7%)
13. The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J.: 378,100, (-5.5%)
14. San Francisco Chronicle: 373,805, (-5.3%)
15. The Star Tribune, Minneapolis: 358,887, (-4.1%)
16. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 350,157, (-3.4%)
17. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland: 336,939, (-0.6%)
18. The Philadelphia Inquirer: 330,622, (-7.5%)
19. Detroit Free Press: 328,628, (-3.6%)
20. The Oregonian, Portland: 310,803, (-6.8%)
21. The San Diego Union-Tribune: 304,334, (-3.1%)
22. St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: 288,676, (-3.2%)
23. The Orange County (Calif.) Register: 287,204, (-3.7%)
24. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 276,588, 0.6%
25. The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee: 273,609, (-5.4%)
Source New York Post
The funny thing is for example that Companies are still placing ads in these papers, in fact they are allocating more resources to this rather than SEO and SEM. This is changing rapidly (roughly equal to the decrease in circulation vs the increase in online readership). The problem is that Ad Agencies are still mis-allocating resources to print media, If they think that this industry will ‘turn around’ they are mistaken.
The problem with Print Media is just that, it’s print. Who wants to deal with calling up the paper, ordering it, having it delivered every day to read 2-3 day old news?
The concept is outmodeled by an ever fast changing updated in real time news outlet called the internet.
It’s pretty much faster than any other type of news source out there, including TV broadcasting because the flow of information online could be called out and evaulated in real time, as opposed to just plastered by one news source.
Trackbacks and pingbacks and online discussions happen so fast, that there might be 10,000 pages of discussion regarding it before it’s even initally broadcast on TV.
