The Wall Street Journal was the only major American paper to increase its circulation last year. Given the malaise of newspapers its a miracle that any paper increased circulation.
However they did it after increasing their cover price as this old Seeking Alpha article reminds us.
It is hard to find any business anywhere (let alone a newspaper) that managed to increase prices and custom last year. Now part of it was that the financial crisis made financial news interesting.
But at least part of it has to be the demise of the once-great New York Times.
I guess Ben Stein is the Sulzberger family gift to Rupert Murdoch.
For competitors the failed editorial of the New York Times (Krugman excepted) is the gift that keeps on giving...
John
the internet is going to kill the NY times and most paid news media except for the infotainment and political diatribe sectors in short order.
ReplyDeleteon one hand, i have no reason to pay for the NY Times.
on the other hand their standard of investigative reporting has been really crappy -- show me one good article on the financial crisis.
i would pay out of pocket a group of knowledgeable and independent people to do real investigative reporting on this. i am sure that i am not the only one. however, i have no medium to do so.
I was in newspapers long before I was in law, and I've watched the reporting and the circulation decline hand in hand. I remember talking to a reporter friend several years ago, and he started waxing about the First Amendment and the "public's right to know", when I cut him off and asked him, "When was the last time you saw anything reported that warranted Constitutional protection? Because the last thing I can think of is Watergate." This produced a lot of hemming and hawing, but no real response.
ReplyDeletePeople like candy, but it isn't what they live on. If you don't serve meat and potatoes, you won't have regular customers.