I
never thought that in my lifetime we would see major newspapers or magazines go
under. Recently Family Circle was
the latest to get killed off after a very long run. But I recently heard a rumor that USA
Today, America’s national newspaper for nearly four decades, may fold its
print edition once the impending merger of Gannett, its parent company, with
New Media Investment Group, parent company to Gate House. That would be the end of an important era and
the beginning of the final chapter for newspapers.
I’m
not ready for a world without newspapers – nor is the book world. But USA Today is failing. Badly.
It’s
a thin rag these days, not inspiring enough to maintain old readers or draw new ones in. The daily paper (5 days a week) sells for $2 but it lacks
meat. It doesn’t have a lot of content
because it’s lacking print ads. It lacks
ads because things are cheaper online.
Advertisers pay less for digital content and a lot of content is free online or low cost as a subscription. It’s an ugly cycle that leaves the paper
decimated.
A
little over a decade ago, USA Today boasted a paid circulation of 2.289
million – tops in the nation. Now, in
the latest audited circulation report, USA Today showed just 520,000
paying customers – and almost two-thirds of that came from hotels that pay a
substantially reduced rate from individuals.
Some
states have fewer than a thousand subscribers, such as Montana, with 266.
Many
papers are cutting back on the size of editions and the frequency of
publication. For instance, the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette has shifted to printing only three days a week. 30 of McClatchy’s newspapers dropped a
Saturday edition. In New Orleans, two
competitors, The Advocate and Advance’s Times Picayune, merged earlier this year.
USA
Today launched in 1982, breaking new ground as a national paper publishing in
full color. It had lite features highlighted by a full-page weather map.
But it eventually covered bigger stories in-depth and stopped losing money (it
lost 200 million over the first five years).
CEO Al Neuharth was a force behind USA Today and he helped create the Nuseum in DC. Unfortunately the place that serves as a tribute to the newspaper is mired in debt and is closing at the end of this year.
CEO Al Neuharth was a force behind USA Today and he helped create the Nuseum in DC. Unfortunately the place that serves as a tribute to the newspaper is mired in debt and is closing at the end of this year.
USA
Today
denies it is shutting its print edition down.
Total
daily newspaper circulation in America – print and digital – was 28.6 million in 2018 for
weekdays sand 30.8 million on Sundays.
Those numbers declined by 8% and 9% from a year ago, according to
Alliance for Audited Media Data.
Of the
top 11 circulating newspapers in the country, five are in NYC and one of them
is free. Only 13 papers have a
circulation of a quarter-million or more.
This is pathetic. Here are the
top papers:
1.
New York Times
2.
Wall Street Journal
3.
USA Today
4.
LI Newsday
5.
LA Times
6.
NY Post
7.
Dallas Morning News
8.
Chicago Tribune
9.
Washington Post
10.
New York Daily News
11.
AM New York
12.
Star Tribune
13.
Houston Chronicle
14.
Austin American
15.
Tampa Bay Times
It
is strange to see a once-mighty medium just collapse. I grew up where newspapers ruled, baseball
was America’s pastime, network TV was king, and America still ran the automobile
market. All of that – and much more has
changed. Just as it seems to me incomprehensible
to see major newspapers thin out, close and die off, it would be the equivalent
of today’s Generation Z'er witnessing the fall of Apple, Google, and
Facebook.
Don’t we need USA Today?
Don’t we need USA Today?
“A man is wise only on condition of living in a world full of fools.”
--Arthur Schopenhauer
“When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.”
--Ludwig Wittgenstein
DON”T MISS THESE!!!
Top All-Time Posts of Award-Winning
Blog: Book Marketing Strategies & Book Publicity Resources
The Book Marketing Strategies Of Best-Sellers
How authors can sell more books
Brian Feinblum’s insightful views,
provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are
his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should --
follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him
at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in
the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2019. Born and
raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often
featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.
This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the
top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best
resource.” He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.