So far the only numbers I have seen on the web are those from the top 25 newspapers. If you run across the numbers from the rest of the country, ping me. I’m very interested in how the local Gannetoids are faring.
There are several observations here. First, if you were a journalist with any of these papers...watching them spiral downward...you’d be awful worried about your future and your pay situation (don’t anticipate pay raises). So staying on a left-wing slant...eventually would eventually determine your life’s ambitions as being doomed.
Second...for you the owner of such a newspaper in a spiral...with this open data being published and all your townspeople and friends aware of the stat’s....you have a continual barrage of people asking how you will improve. Dumping your slanted news is probably not an option...so you keep talking about this big-time reporter you are bringing to town....to pump up enthusiasm.
Third and final...the numbers are played around with people who place advertising. They can walk in and suggest a 10 percent discount because of lousy reader numbers. They will likely get that.
Now a personal slant to this deal. I went back to my old hometown over the weekend. My dad still subscribes to the local paper. So I’m sitting there on a Sunday morning and reading this paper. It used to take me around thirty minutes to read the Sunday paper...this time, it took eight minutes. They’ve downsized drastically and eighty percent of the Sunday paper was packaged from the mother organization. There was barely one page of anything local and it was obvious that they were cutting back.
I think a lot of USA Today’s circulation comes from the free copies hotels slide under your door. Mine always goes, unread, straight to the garbage.