Posts for Ticker ‘AHC’

Rating the Top 25 Newspaper Websites 2009

newspaperThe struggle for large urban newspapers to stay in business has largely been an effort on the part of their managements to increase revenue on the Internet faster than it is lost in their print editions. It has become clear that the race is becoming one that newspapers are unlikely to win. Internet revenue for some online editions is actually dropping. Print advertising is going down as fast as it did in 2008. Several large newspapers including The Rocky Mountain News have folded in the last year. The owners of other papers, particularly The Boston Globe and The San Francisco Chronicle, have threatened to fold these properties unless workers are willing to accept significant cuts in people or compensation.

A few newspaper websites have extremely large numbers of visitors. Online research service Compete.com reported that NYTimes.com had nearly 15 million unique visitors in May. The New York Times Company (NYT) reported that its online revenue fell 8% to $42.2 million in the first quarter, despite the size of the flagship paper’s website and other online properties such as Boston.com, the website affiliated with The Boston Globe. Online revenue was only 12.8% of the company’s sales, hardly adequate to have a significant impact on a firm  in severe financial trouble. The Washington Post Company’s newspaper revenue associated with online publishing fell 8% to $23 million in the first quarter of 2009. Washingtonpost.com had 8.7 million unique visitors in May, which makes it a large website, but clearly not big enough. Newspaper publishing revenue at the Post was $160.9 million in Q1, down 22% from the same period a year ago. The company losing revenue that fast cannot afford to have its online revenue shrink and account for only 14% of total sales. Read More »

Posted on: June 15, 2009 – 8:36 pm in Editor's Picks, Entertainment, Internet, Media, Old Media, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Eleven Of Twenty-Five Largest US Newpapers Lost More Than 10% Of Circulation

newspaper25At one point, three or four years ago, for a major metropolitan newspaper to lose 4% or 5% of it daily circulation would have been considered bad news. For the six month period ending in March, ten of the top twenty-five largest dailies in the US lost over 10% of theirs, according to circulation audit firm The Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The circulation of The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWS) was down more than 20% to 558,140. It is the 7th largest newspaper in America. Read More »

Posted on: April 27, 2009 – 12:36 pm in Old Media, , , , ,