Jim Romenkso’s MediaNews column on Poynter Online had three interesting and I believe related stories this morning. We’ll start with the bad news and move to the good.
- After cutting their circulation area in April to a 200 mile radius, the Dallas Morning News reports that they are cutting it back to a 100 mile radius. This comes after cutting 10 percent of their newsroom staff a few months ago.
- The San Jose Mercury news cut 35 employees (10 being newsroom employees) in an effort to cut costs.
- The New York Times announced they expect to see 30 percent growth in Internet revenue in 2007.
All of these stories hitting at once bring to mind a couple of questions.
First, does this mark the beginning of the end of the printed newspapers? I would say possibly, but this definitely is a warning bell for regional newspapers and publicly owned newspapers. For far too long public investors have expected 20 plus percent profit margins from newspapers and with falling circulation and falling advertising revenue margins of that size can no longer be expected. It is evident with the recent disappareance of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain and the Tribune newspaper chain looking for a buyer. Rick Edmonds discusses the disappearance of publicly held newspapers in Poynter Online’s centerpiece today.
Second, is the Internet going to save everyone’s bacon? Well, maybe. The News industry will make a lot of money off of the Internet, but I’m not sure the newspaper industry is at that point yet. Many newspapers see the writing on the wall and are moving that way, but mass change of attitude from being a newspaper to a news provider can only be seen in a couple of places (like Gannett’s information center initiative).
