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Kansas Liberty: 16 December 2008
It's the same problem everywhere: no money, no readers, no ads: what's bad for the Eagle is bad for The New York Times.
No relief in sight for Kansas' daily papers
It's no secret that nationally, newspapers are in trouble. Circulations have been steadily decreasing, advertisers are leaving, the economy is sputtering, and layoffs sweep every newsroom.
According to figures released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print and online newspaper ad revenues plummeted to $8.92 billion in the third quarter of 2008, an 18% drop of nearly $2 billion from the previous year, and a 6.9% drop from the previous quarter.
Some of the biggest newspapers in the country are in trouble. At The New York Times, there have been layoffs and a wage freeze was recently imposed by a worried management. The Tribune Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, had its first bankruptcy hearing on Dec. 10. The company faced a $12.9 billion debt.
Newspapers in Kansas are suffering along with the rest.
The price of a share in the McClatchy Company, which owns the Kansas City Star and the Wichita Eagle, is currently sitting at $1.62 a share, a sharp drop from the $70 price it sold at four years ago.
Gary Pruitt, McClatchy's CEO, recently described the future for his company as "lousy," and Tuesday, the company reported that consolidated revenues in November 2008 decreased 19.4% and advertising revenues were down 22.4% compared to revenues in November 2007.
The Kansas City Star daily circulation decreased 2.3 percent and its Sunday circulation fell 5.3 percent. Employees have been laid off and the financial troubles of big advertisers such as Circuit City have meant the loss of millions in advertising.
The Hays Daily News is among the group of dailies owned by Harris Enterprises of Hutchinson, most of which have experienced decreasing circulation numbers lately.
Bob Weigel, circulation manager at the Hays Daily News, said the daily and the weekend circulation numbers have been steadily declining in the last few years.
“People are starting to change the frequency from daily to weekend, or to cancel all together because of the economy,” Weigel told Kansas Liberty.
The paper's daily circulation is currently 10,800, and Sunday's circulation is 11,600. These numbers reflect a decrease from the previous year’s daily circulation of 11,400, and 12,100 on Sunday. The population of Hays, meanwhile, has remained steady since the 2000 Census reported the population at 20,013.
Even the state's smallest dailies are seeing circulation ebb.
Craig McNeal, the owner of the Council Grove Republican, said his daily newspaper had a circulation of 1,877 in October 2008 - down 75 readers from the year before. McNeal said the declining population of Council Grove makes it difficult to be optimistic that the paper’s circulation would improve.
“We are out here in a rural area and the population is not growing,” McNeal told Kansas Liberty. “But we are always hoping to get an increase here and there.”
Kansas Press Association consultant and retired University of Kansas professor Tom Eblen, said smaller newspapers have a more optimistic outlook than the larger, national papers.
“In smaller communities, in my experience, there is a real demand for and appreciation of the newspaper,” Eblen told Kansas Liberty. “And its going to take a long time for that to change.”
Eblen said he thought the circulation numbers for the larger, national papers were only going to get worse.
“The decline has been under way for a long time and it has just been accelerating in the last couple of years,” Eblen told Kansas Liberty. “The trend at this point would suggest that online will be the answer for some people but not for those of us who are past forty.”
The most recent Audit Bureau of Circulations six-month report, which measured a six-month period ending in September, showed that out of the 507 newspapers to report numbers, the average daily circulation decreased by 4.6 percent. Sunday circulation was reported by 571 papers. Their numbers decreased 4.8 percent.
Publishers claim they are losing business to the Internet and to new models of information gathering and distribution. Conservatives claim that mainstream newspapers are suffering because they have been perceived as unfriendly to at least half the potential market.
Resources
- The Newspaper Association of America: http://www.naa.org/
- Kansas Press Association: http://www.kspress.com
Economy explains some, but not all...
But newspaper circulation has been dropping for years, really since the 90's. Some of it can be explained by readers turning to the internet, but assuming they are turning to the internet just because it's free is, in my opinion, a false assumption. Just look at Kansas Liberty. I don't read it because it's free...I read it because it provides a service I can't get anywhere else in the state.
Really, all the internet did was provide an alternative that print newspapers can't compete with, and it has nothing to do with price. Just as CNN can't compete with Fox News, print papers are having trouble competing with internet news sources.
The difference has been that it's difficult for CNN to come up with an excuse other than their liberal bias for their poor ratings. Newspapers have convinced themselves that information 'free' on the internet is the reason they are loosing readers, when in fact, it's not the 'free' that has caused them to loose the majority of their readers, but the 'bias.'
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Why the decline?
I think this is more of the case. I don't want to sound as if I am bragging, but my monthly publication, Kaw Valley Senior Monthly, just concluded its best year since we launched in 2001. Our readership is up and our display advertising was up by over 10 percent this year. We should be up about 20+ percent in January 2009 over January 2008.
We don't do much political content, except a publisher's column from time to time. Of course, I always write from the conservative perspective. I've gotten no complaints, and I think that is because I avoid being nasty.
Here in Lawrence, Kan., the Op-Ed page is overwhelmingly liberal. And the liberals, such as Garrison Keillor and Michael Luckovich, tend to be nasty in there comments and cartoons. Of course, Lawrence is a liberal town, but there are still more Bush and McCain voters here than the Lawrence Journal-World has subscribers.
I may be comparing apples to oranges. A monthly, niche publication is different from a daily newspaper. However, I think if these newspapers dropped the insulting, liberal tripe they would be in much better shape.
Interestingly, I received a Christmas card from a former Madison Capital Times reporter that I attended the University of the Philippines with in 1989. He left that paper earlier this year to become a lobbyist because he said the paper was in bad shape. He then attacked George W. Bush and noted that his wife, who came here from the Philipines in 1990, became a U.S. citizen this year so she could vote for Obama. I imagine this guy worked at the Capital Times for 25 years fully believing his reporting was nothing but objective. He is apparently oblivious to the fact that his (and his comrades') liberal bias at that paper probably created the situation that put his newspaper in dire financial straits.