Newspaper advertising has undoubtedly changed within recent years. Hybrid cars and mobile phones have changed too. Change is inevitable and not always as bad as it can seem.
The stories of the closures of major newspapers, like the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have already been widely publicized. With these stories have come the predictions that the net and shrinking audiences has forced newspapers out of business and will continue to do so. As TIME magazine reports, the fall of the Rocky Mountain naija news News tells an alternative story. The primary blame may be positioned on upper-management – “the Scripps’ newspaper executives whose ineptitude within the last 25 years fumbled away an excellent market to a competitor they need to have killed off 2 full decades ago.”
Another story that’s widely told concerning the crisis facing newspapers is that the problem is audience based. Catchy, although not true. Newspapers still benefit from significant readership. In reality, more Americans read the printed newspaper than watch the Super Bowl each year. Donna Barrett, President and CEO of Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. is dispelling these rumors by explaining the problem with newspapers is a revenue issue and not deficiencies in audience. Advertising has long supported the large expense of running a newspaper; however, the recession has generated an important decrease in ad spending. The next problem, explains Barrett, is free classified sites winning considerable classified business. Both problems do not need immediate solutions, however, resolutions are feasible.
With smaller expenses, staffs and overhead, community newspapers have not felt the impact of the recession as much as their larger counterparts. In August, The National Newspaper Association (NNA) reported the 2008 fourth-quarter newspaper advertising revenue of community papers at $428.7 million, just a 6.6 percent decline from exactly the same quarter in 2007. For the general newspaper industry, this study showed a decline in fourth-quarter advertising expenditures of over 20 percent.
80% of US newspapers reach a circulation of 15,000 or fewer. 8,000 of those newspapers are classified as community newspapers. Local advertisers have long recognized the benefits of advertising in these small but plentiful newspapers. These small, community papers wind up developing a monopoly over the local news that directly affects their readers’ daily lives, making them a total staple in many communities. In a recent survey, NNA reports that 81% of those surveyed read an area paper each week. Without these papers individuals are left at night on political, social and even personal issues going on in their immediate communities, things larger media outlets rarely have the full time or resources to report