It's a question worth asking. This could be the worst year for newspapers since the Great Depression. The double-digit revenue declines long forecast by doomsters have arrived. While nearly all the major papers still post profits, albeit smaller than before, a few prominent ones are losing boatloads. At Hearst Newspapers' San Francisco Chronicle, according to a deposition given by James M. Asher, the company's chief legal and business development officer, losses of $330 million piled up between mid-2000 and September, 2006, better—or should I say worse?—than $1 million a week. During negotiations with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's unions, the owning Block family disclosed that the paper lost $20 million in 2006. Late last year, The Boston Globe was headed for unprofitability as well, according to The Wall Street Journal.
And 2007 does not look materially kinder than 2006 for any of these papers. One senior executive describes the climate like this: "If you told me 24 months ago that revenues would be declining as much as they are today, I'd say you were smoking dope." Print newspapers require maintaining a costly status quo—paper, presses, trucks, and mail rooms—that, if only through rising gas prices, will only get more expensive.
WHEN, EXACTLY, do you junk something that no longer works? And which major paper should go first—not today, but within the next 18 or 24 months?
San Francisco Chronicle, I'm looking at you.
I think this idea is nonsense. I think it would be financial suicide given the unwillingness of advertisers to pay the big bucks for online placement. (But, Biz Week says, what if there were no newspaper in which to advertise....)
Still, I never thought I'd see such speculation in Business Week, even if it's idle speculation. I've always assumed paper papers would outlive me, both of us gracefully fading away. I really thought I'd go first.
Here's a nice p.s., from Spring. Chron's big hit was the year *before* last.
AP
Circulation at the Top 20 Newspapers
Monday April 30, 10:59 am ET
By The Associated Press
1. USA Today, 2,278,022, up 0.2 percent
2. The Wall Street Journal, 2,062,312, up 0.6 percent
3. The New York Times, 1,120,420, down 1.9 percent
4. Los Angeles Times, 815,723, down 4.2 percent
5. New York Post, 724,748, up 7.6 percent
6. New York Daily News, 718,174, up 1.4 percent
7. The Washington Post, 699,130, down 3.5 percent
8. Chicago Tribune, 566,827, down 2.1 percent
9. Houston Chronicle, 503,114, down 2 percent
10. The Arizona Republic, 433,731, down 1.1 percent
11. Dallas Morning News, 411,919, down 14.3 percent
12. Newsday, Long Island, 398,231, down 6.9 percent
13. San Francisco Chronicle, 386,564, down 2.9 percent
14. The Boston Globe, 382,503, down 3.7 percent
15. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., 372,629, down 6.1 percent
16. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 357,399, down 2.1 percent
17. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 352,593, up 0.6 percent
18. Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 345,252, down 4.9 percent
19. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, 344,704, up 0.5 percent
20. Detroit Free Press, 329,989, down 4.7 percent
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