"
Papers facing worst year for ad revenue" screamed the
New York Times yesterday, a headline topping an article about a "double-digit drop in advertising revenue" at American newspapers. But apart from the information detailed after the obvious headline, two observations can be taken from the article.
1. The general public is catching onThe headline enticed enough people to click through to the story that it was driven up to #7 on the most read stories list of
nytimes.com and #3 on the 10 most blogged stories. Although media bloggers have been enthusiastically documenting the ups and downs of American newspapers for several years, the fact that the article reached both of these lists shows that the general public, or at least the audience of nytimes.com, is more aware and interested in the plight of the industry. Perhaps newspaper readers, recognizing the seemingly dire short-term financial futures of US papers, are becoming genuinely concerned about their favorite papers, the journalism they produce and the democracies which they keep in check. As the industry struggles through tough economic times, will their readers come to the rescue by buying more subscriptions or even contributing money to help keep the newshole deep?
2. Dailies vs. weekliesWhat was also interesting about the NYT article was what preceded it; a full-browser window advertisement for the analytical UK-based weekly,
The Economist. Whereas the print circulation of the
New York Times has remained relatively stable over the past decade (while the circs of its brothers in many American markets have decreased substantially),
the circulation and revenues of the Economist have doubled.
Although the Economist is recognized as one of the smartest newspapers in the world and has undergone an ambitious global marketing scheme over the past few years, some analysts attribute its recent circ and revenue success to changes in the habits of readers. A growing number of newshounds scan the headlines on the Internet or mobile devices constantly throughout the day and thus have little need to purchase the daily paper which is often a rehash of news they already know. But weeklies such as the Economist have more time to reflect upon current events and get to the "What does it mean" aspect of news, something that is very difficult to accomplish on a daily basis. This aspect seems to be a near perfect fit in the busy daily lives of people. Where they once may have taken a couple of hours to read the newspaper front to back, now, news reading habits seem to more like this:
1. scan the headlines and first paragraph almost immediately after something happens
2. skip the details in the rest of the article
3. wait a few days for a comprehensive story that tells readers what incidents mean for the world and themselves.
In this sense, it has been suggested that newspapers scale back the frequency of their print editions to 3 or 4 days a week to adhere to readers' busy lifestyles. Even US weeklies seem to be
decreasing their publishing frequency to bi-weekly in order to allow more time for reflection.
Back to the
Economist advertisement. It would be curious to see what kind of success rate the
Economist receives from advertising in
NYT and if they'll receive converts from the
NYT print daily to the
Economist print weekly. On the other hand, any defectors will more than likely continue reading
nytimes.com for their daily headlines. The problem seems to be that
brief headline-reading visits to daily websites like nytimes.com aren't encouraging for advertisers, and in turn will not help any revenue losses from downturns in print advertising.
