Archive for February 16th, 2012
Charging for web content? ‘Nothing is imminent’ at this paper
On Valentine’s Day, a Buffalo business news magazine reported annual operating profits at my regional metro daily, The Buffalo News, had “for the first time in at least 25 years … [fallen] below $10 million and the paper is exploring the possibility of perhaps charging for online content to offset circulation declines.”
Such is the trend — ad revenues diving into fiscal oblivion — at many of the nation’s large metropolitan dailies. As Alan Mutter at Newsosaur wrote in December:
Newspaper advertising sales this year will come in at less than half the record $49.4 billion achieved as recently in 2005, according to an analysis of the year-to-date performance of the industry. [emphasis added]
Imagine that: An industry’s ad sales have fallen by half in just seven years. But to listen to the publisher of The Buffalo News, you’d conclude he’s saying, “It’s not our fault.”
In a Buffalo First story by reporter James Fink, publisher Stan Lipsey suggests that the Buff News‘ sinking financial fortunes are due to factors beyond the newspaper’s control. Perhaps, but like many such managerial pronouncements in the industry over the past decade, admission of flawed management decisions past and present is nowhere in sight.
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