Monday, March 26, 2007
"Wrenching change and chaos"
Yikes — today's NY Times has a sobering article about the state of the newspaper biz. The NYT reports that February ad newspaper ad revenue is way down:
At USA Today, the nation’s biggest newspaper, ad revenue was down 14 percent this February, compared with February last year. Gannett,which owns USA Today and is the nation’s biggest newspaper company,reported that its overall ad revenue declined 3.8 percent in Februaryfrom February 2006.
I'm not sure if these figures include weeklies or small community papers — the writer mentions some papers in "smaller markets" but even those are way, way bigger than any market here in Vermont. So I'm not sure how true this is for Vermont, but I'm sure we're all headed in this direction.
Media analyst Barry Parr ends the story with this choice quote:
“There is absolutely no question that the next 10 years are going to bereally bad for the newspaper business,” he said. “This is a time ofwrenching change and chaos. All of our assumptions about newspapers aregoing to be changed. The format, the business model, the organizationof newspapers have outlived their usefulness.”
I agree with "wrenching change and chaos," but I don't think this is a bad time to be in the newspaper business. I love a challenge.
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