New York Times Co. (NYT)
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- Newspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Momentum; Online Struggling Too [view article]
- Desperate Times Bring Redesign to NY Times [view article]
- At New York Times, the Futurist Is Now... Leaving [view article]
- WSJ Engages The NY Times on the Luxury Battlefield [view article]
- The New York Times: Living in Denial [view article]
- Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
- Newspaper Stocks: New York Times Company, Gannett and McClatchy [view article]
- Board and Executive Compensation in S&P 500 [view article]
- The New York Times Struggles Online in July [view article]
- Too Late for Newspapers to Turn the Tide? [view article]
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- Desperate Times Bring Redesign to NY Times
- Newspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Momentum; Online Struggling Too
- At New York Times, the Futurist Is Now... Leaving
- No Angst or Shame in 'WSJ' Magazine Debut
- WSJ Engages The NY Times on the Luxury Battlefield
- Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News
- The New York Times: Living in Denial
- The New York Times Struggles Online in July
- Newspaper Stocks: New York Times Company, Gannett and McClatchy
- Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News
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Newspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Momentum; Online Struggling Too [view article]
getting rid of the neighborhood delivery teen did not help. ReplyNewspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Momentum; Online Struggling Too [view article]
testing ReplyCt
Desperate Times Bring Redesign to NY Times [view article]
The New York Times is nothing but a Left Wing,America hating rag......... ReplyNewspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Momentum; Online Struggling Too [view article]
As a 20 plus year veteran of the Newspaper industry...as an Advertising Management professional (Daily and Weekly, Shoppers, Family Owned, and Corporate Owned) I have an insiders opinion.Newspaper revenues have been self inflicted wounds. Family owned newspapers in smaller markets are in much better shape than newspapers in markets owned by corporations or large groups. Many of the problems can be repaired, or at least the declines arrested.
The main issues can be laid at the feet of top executives and publishers. Therefore, the problems can be corrected by examining them, and probably removing most of them.
The problem....lack of long term vision, and the wrong skill set to correct them. Corporate newspapers have valued only the immediate months' Operating Profit, and designed compensation programs accordingly. Corporate directors receive bonus payments based on either annual or divisional factors. This system has focused on the very short term performance financially.
Virtually no focus is placed on the fundamentals of the business. Adding to this, high level managers at the local and corporate level have changed in professional fields of expertise. Over the past 10 years, most local publishers and higher corporate types are now financial managers- accountants- not Editors, Advertising, or Circulation types. Think of that for a moment, and you can begin to see a large part of the long term problem.
Newspapers have traditionally attracted people interested in reading news that is important to them. Advertising was strong, because local advertisers could rely on both strong readership of their ads, and affordable ad rates that reflected return on investment. Both have been seriously eroded, and may be too late to correct.
Readership has been eroded, because senior management directed focus on short term bonus' for themselves. Examples...the refusal to invest resources and time for local Circulation managers to build home delivery services of newspapers. Instead, a practice of artificially "puffing" circulation is the focus. Almost all newspapers now have NIE departments (Newspaper In Education). Sounds good on the surface, however, the main reason the departments exist, and the main responsibility, is getting large bulk sales to schools paid for by businesses. That is then called "paid circulation" and reported as such to the ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation). Another practice is to "wrap" a newspaper with a "jacket" of newsprint with ads on it. That "jacket" is paid for by advertisers, then dropped at hotels etc, perhaps at major league sporting events or concerts. Then, that entire pressrun is counted as "paid" as well. Using a newspaper to help reading programs is not really the circulation Advertisers are counting on. Nor is a free newspaper at the hotel desk. Home delivery is the most important, with paid single copy sales next.
The problem? Real newspaper circulation is far less than stated. The consequence is that ads don't reach real readers, and ads don't work as well as in the past. This "puffed" circulation is the basis that ad rates are sold to advertisers.
Why does this matter? Many publishers receive bonus based on circulation increases, not the type of circulation. Ad rates have also faced similar issues. Circulation goes down, ad rates go up, and results for those advertisers go down as well. In the online area, Publishers refuse to re think the model. Classified ad rates were raised artificially and forced online, with no infra structure to give that online ad a chance to work. It was done simply to add revenue. Results for the customer were not considered. That inflated price gave rise to Craigslist, Monster, and many others that have eroded Classified ads.
Display advertising is no different. Less real circulation, yet higher rate. What other industry does that? Give you less, but charge you more. Very poor execution of the online revenue model. Many publishers try to count online pageviews as extra circuation. Marginally true, but the print advertiser gets NO benefit of it, and the online only advertiser gets no benefit from the print. So, not completely accurate to "spin" online pageviews as circulation to advertisers
In the newsroom, the head counts have been drastically slashed. The only reason anyone even buys a newspaper is to read the news. The problem is not so much the cuts, as WHO has been cut, or quit. The more tenured and experienced the newsperson, the more likely they are to be be gone from today's newsroom.
At some point, there will be an executive in one of the companies that will state the obvious, and make some bold decisions. If the CEO does not fire them immediately, the changes needed will be done, and the newspaper industry will recover in some form. Until then, the death spiral will continue. The market will crush many of them, and only a few will survive. Local family owned newspapers have a better chance of survival, because they tend to make better long term decisions.
Think of it this way...an NFL team cuts it's best quarterback, running backs, line, and defense, but KEEPS the rookies and third stringers! Then expects the team to win the Superbowl, and expects you to pay the full ticket price to watch em! Then, the executive is surprised by an empty stadium!!
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Newspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Momentum; Online Struggling Too [view article]
it can be true even if we dont like it. newspapers can go the way of the buggywhip.most kids that i know are not interested in the news,nevermind the newspaper.in my day,last century,most kids at least read the paper for the cartoons.there is no future for print with most of todays kids & they are the future.the world will survive. ReplyDesperate Times Bring Redesign to NY Times [view article]
Let's start an over-and-under pool on how many years until this American icon goes broke and ceases publication. I would pick 14 years but at my age I myself may not last long enough to collect my winnings. Pinch (what a nickname) has destroyed an American institution in pursuit of his social outlook. ReplyNewspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Momentum; Online Struggling Too [view article]
this and also telephone book ad decline is just as steep and t.v. news ads are way down. tech is changing everything and it's not an advertising recession when it comes to some of this. newspapers will not recover substantially nor will the phone books or t.v. news.the only spot left is the web and the recession IS the impact there. Reply
Desperate Times Bring Redesign to NY Times [view article]
Brilliant - Pinch takes the skewed slant from page 4 and moves it to page 7 while leaving the skewed slant on page one right where it has been. This is likely to fix all ills as the reader will be blown away by the new look and never figure out that he is still reading the same old crap that serves the publisher's partisanship. Wish I'd thought of that. ReplyNewspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Momentum; Online Struggling Too [view article]
I maintain models of (NAA) ad expenditures trends and I must say I was totally surprised by the Q2 results for online. The $777 million is in the zero percentile in a one period ahead series. I was forecasting the 2008 aggregate expenditure to be $39.4 bilion and 2009 to be $34.6 billion. It's going to be worse than that. Additionally, for some time now, newspaper ad exps have been disconnected from macroeconomic indicators. These recent trends are not cyclical. ReplyNewspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Momentum; Online Struggling Too [view article]
Amazing decline. Do you have a sense of the breakdown in online between classified and display? I see a ton of display inventory flowing through main pages on newspaper sites, which continue to be healthy, so is classified the culprit, or are the ad rates driving down on display? ReplyAt New York Times, the Futurist Is Now... Leaving [view article]
sounds like more selfserving. ReplyWSJ Engages The NY Times on the Luxury Battlefield [view article]
they may both end up as glossy mags.the world will survive. ReplyThe New York Times: Living in Denial [view article]
would it really be the end of the world if the times folded? i havent bothered to read it since it endorsed castro in the eisenhower years.i survived.i dont care one way or the other. ReplyWall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
Will, Murdoch maybe, but someone ought to run the paper. Even its liberal bent is not consistent. One wonders if there is some kind of internal torment tearing the paper apart. The might be economies of scale to joint operations with the WSJ, but the WSJ has become its own version of death warmed over. The FT seems to be replacing the Journal on just plain old fashioned covered and commentary. Once the decline starts, it just cascades to hell. Replyancisco
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
It's nice to see Coke buying in China - Coke has long been a truly international company which happens to have its headquarters in Atlanta. For the rest of it (like the Lehman auction), we continue to sell ourselves to cover our $60 billion per month deficit. Closing that gap should be the primary economic issue for our presidential candidates, not who can give the biggest tax cuts to the most people. Reply