State of Newsmedia; Seattle PI Latest Casualty

by jill ~ March 17, 2009

According to a story on PRWeekUS.com yesterday, the media is facing a continued ad crisis. This is not exactly breaking news, but the ominous predictions from the Pew Research Center include the expectation that several newspapers will fail and numerous others will cease seven-day home delivery this year.   Well, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Tucson Citizen are two casualties just this week alone.

According to PRWeek, “The [Pew Research] organization revealed in data released today, that while the newspapers average an 11% profit margin and collectively take in about $38 billion in revenue, those revenues have dropped 23% in the past two years, while staffing at newspapers has dipped by one-fifth since 2001. The report also revealed that classified advertising at newspapers could be nonexistent within five years. “The State of the News Media Report” also predicted that conventional advertising will not be enough to support online journalism, revealing that the average rate charge for 1,000 views of an online ad decreased by half last year, down to just 26 cents. And the Web provided less than 10% of newspaper ad revenue last year.”

It’s definitely not a good time to be a newspaper journalists.  So, what is next?

According to this story in The Christian Science Monitor, which now publishes online exclusively, “In an ironic twist, the rapid deterioration of the newspaper business is occurring even as the appetite for news is growing, at least online. The problem is that Web readers expect the content to be free of charge.”

How will the publishers go online and still get paid, you ask?  Here are a few strategies being used:

See The Guardian UK’s plans to go online in mass - last week, “the company launched Open Platform, a service that will allow partners to reuse guardian.co.uk content and data for free and weave it “into the fabric of the internet”.  Open Platform launched with two separate content-sharing services, which will allow users to build their own applications in return for carrying Guardian advertising.  A content application programming interface (API) will smooth the way for web developers to build applications and services using Guardian content, while a Data Store will contain datasets curated by Guardian editors and open for others to use.”

See this Associated Press story about the ex- Rocky Mountain News staffers planning to launch a online news website if they can get 50,000 paid subscribers by April 23^rd. 

See this Reuters story about government aid being given to newspapers.

This story in Editor and Publisher talks about how more newspapers will go online, and another story about here about syndication options for newspapers.

See this Associated Press story about the concept for newspapers to become non-profits.