The death of print? Says who? And so what?

“Daily papers face unprecedented competition, sometimes from their own Web sites,” shouts the page 19 story in the Feb. 28-March 6 Washington Post National Weekly Edition.

The lede:

“The venerable newspaper is in trouble. Under sustained assault from cable television, the Internet, all-news radio and lifestyles so cram-packed they leave little time for the daily paper, the industry is struggling to remake itself.”

Sure sounds like the news biz is trying stave off its imminent demise, doesn’t it?

Well, that’s not the whole story. The Post uses as examples of “daily newspapers,” or quotes executives of, itself (number 5 in circulation at 1,007,487), The New York Times (number 3 at 1,680,583), Houston Chronicle (number 10 at 737,580), The Boston Globe (number 12 at 707,813), The Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer (number 20 at 462,920), Chicago Sun-Times (number 21 at 486,930, but we’ll ignore it because it cheated by inflating circulation figures), and the Shawnee, Okla., News-Star at an average weekday circulation of 9,688 , which ranks it somewhere around number 800. (See the ABC audit figures.)

In other words, the hype about the death of print resides in fears about the demise of Really Big Newspapers.

Advertisement