Newspapers take a bus plunge: circulation plummets 10.6 percent

By Martin Langeveld

It’s hard to put a good face on this kind of news; in fact, it reminds me of the old “bus plunge” meme. The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) reports that newspaper circulation for the six months ending Sept. 30 dropped 10.6 percent from the same period in 2008 (7.5 percent on Sundays).

And this is an accelerating trend. Here are the results for the three previous six-month reporting periods (in each case, versus the same period one year earlier):

— Oct. 1, 2008-Mar. 31, 2009: down 7.1 percent on weekdays, down 5.3% on Sundays
— Apr. 1, 2008-Sept. 30, 2008: down 4.6 percent on weekdays, down 4.9 percent on Sunday
— Oct. 1, 2007-Mar. 31, 2008: down 3.5 percent on weekdays, down 4.5 percent on Sundays

In each case, the decline was the worst ever reported by ABC. The bus-plunge, cliff-drop analogy will get additional support when the Newspaper Association of America’s third-quarter advertising revenue report comes out (typically at Halloween); it’s likely to continue the trend of the previous two quarters with a drop in the 20-30 percent ballpark.

The NAA has not provided positive spin on the circulation news (it usually distributes an internal memo with upbeat talking points for publishers), but last week it did report gains in newspaper website traffic along with this comment from NAA President and CEO John Sturm:

Newspaper publishers continue to aggressively reinvent their business models, leveraging trusted brands to attract a growing and sophisticated audience in the digital space. At the same time, industry executives have adopted smarter circulation strategies that are growing circulation revenues even though paid circulation numbers are lower. This places the focus where it belongs: retaining core readers who deliver maximum value to advertisers while harnessing digital platforms to broaden our medium’s audience and position us strongly for the future.

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Talking Points Memo explores a membership model, but no paywall

By Joshua Benton

Talking Points Memo spent the weekend asking its readers for advice on building a mobile strategy. (See these three posts.) Two of their findings are of interest to future-of-journalism types:

— The Kindle remains a half-hearted medium for news, an awkward mix of book-centric tech and news organizations searching for marginal revenue. Here’s TPM top boss Josh Marshall:

There are many fewer Kindles out there than iPhones, let alone Blackberries. But even among Kindle users, demand didn’t seem too great. A lot of you said that you love it for books. But it’s just not made for rapidly changing information, our more iterative style of writing and reporting. And it’s also not great visually for anything but pure text. Another way of saying this is that it’s designed for books, which of course it is. Just speaking for myself, and as someone who’s become an avid user of my Kindle for books, I think I agree.

By contrast, “we’ve got a lot of readers who are very into their Palm Pre mobile devices,” Marshall reports, although they still lag far behind iPhone users in numbers.

— TPM is exploring a membership model that aims to draw money out of its most dedicated readers without putting all its content behind a paywall. Keep reading »