U.S. newspaper circulation slumps 1.9%

[UpInArms]

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B33A50CA0%2DE1A3%2D4C56%2D87A7%2DDEE9452BA602%7D&siteid=mktw

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Daily newspaper circulation declined almost 2 percent in the last six months -- with an even bigger slip on Sundays -- according to an analysis by an industry trade group.

<snip>

Tribune Co. took two hits. The Chicago Tribune's Sunday circulation dropped below 1 million as its paid figure fell by almost 50,000 to 953,800 while the Los Angeles Times Monday-Saturday figure slumped from 970,000 to just below 908,000.

The nation's largest-circulation daily, Gannett's USA Today, gained, with its average daily circulation moving up to 2.2 million from 2.19 million. Dow Jones & Co.'s Wall Street Journal, which is No. 2 in circulation, shed about 17,000 in paid subscribers to 2.07 million.

...more...

[Sabriel]

1. Gee, I can't imagine why

First off, I dropped the two newspapers and two magazines I usually get, for budgetary reasons.

Second, I was tired of the rah-rah I read all the time. If I want that, I'll go to FR, for free.

[BrainRants]

2. Keep it up morans, your days are numbered.

Please, make me buy your paper, do some reporting!

[saigon68]

36. THEY PANDER TO THE SHEEP

Except the SHEEP don't read. They go to FAUX for all their news.

[bpilgrim]

39. the BLOGGERS are at the gates ;-)

http://images.globalfreepress.com

peace

[iconoclastic cat]

3. And taking their cue from the RIAA lawsuits, they will be suing

all those who have used online news sources.

[ananda]

4. Yes!

I was so excited when I saw this. I boycott MSM of all kinds.

I'll be even more excited when this downward trend shows up in cable tv statistics.

Sue

[dissent1977]

23. Boycott CORPORATE media, it is not mainstream

I am making it my mission to make sure that everyone on DU quits using the term "mainstream media". They are not mainstream, they are the corporate elites and to call them mainstream only gives them credibility. They are the corporate media, and lets always remember that when we talk about them.

[UpInArms]

38. Welcome to DU dissent1977!

:hi:

Glad to have you here!

[xxqqqzme]

49. hear, hear

glad 2 C someone else has joined the cause - I call them CMC - corporate media clique.

[RobinA]

32. Excited????

You think TV being the only news outlet is a GOOD thing. Clue. Some of the primary whistleblowers of the Vietnam/Watergate era came out of the newspapers. If newspapers go down there is NO HOPE for a repeat performance.

[NeoConsSuck]

41. I tend to agree..

there are many newspapers in america that don't bow to the NeoCons, and still actually do reporting, not jingoism.

Just because the New York Times is a NeoCon mouthpiece, doesn't mean every paper is.

[BlueEyedSon]

5. It should slump 90%, its crap

[maxsolomon]

6. i'm about to dump the seattle times

so look for the numbers to plummet further.

its actually kinda sad.

[tanyev]

7. I cancelled my subscription to the Dallas Morning News

after they endorsed Dim Son last year. Since that time I've had several phone calls inviting me to subscribe again and I've gotten to tell them each time exactly why I cancelled.

[LisaM]

12. What do they say to you?

Are they sympathetic?

[tanyev]

16. It varies.

The first call I got was in direct response to my cancellation email, but she was working from a prepared script--I'm sure she didn't have anything that told her why I had cancelled. So she led me through a pretty detailed survey and when I told her that their endorsement of Bush told me I couldn't trust the judgment of the people running the newspaper, she started laughing and agreed with me. We had a nice little chat. I told her I was very sorry, but I just couldn't keep subscribing to the paper.

Later calls have been from some telemarketing group the newspaper must have hired, because our number is not listed and we rarely get telemarketing calls. The last one was a young man who exclaimed, "You didn't vote for George Bush?" I said no and was just getting wound up to tell him why, but he must have gotten some signal to end the call because he cut me off pretty fast.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

20. "You didn't vote for George Bush?"

[LisaM]

22. LOLOL.

I got a solicitation call from the Seattle Times in 2001 while I was at work and I kept trying to get rid of them (they actually started by trying to sell me the Post-Intelligencer, which I already get) and they just wouldn't get off the phone. Someone was in the office with me and could only hear my half of the conversation and finally I shouted, "I'm not going to subscribe to the Seattle Times! They endorsed George Bush!" and my co-worker started laughing hysterically. Of course, they took it to heart and endorsed Kerry last time around.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

27. The PI or the Times...

A true Hobbesian choice. At least The Stranger is free. :shrug:

[UpInArms]

37. LOL!

AAAARRR!!!!!

Pod People!

:rofl:

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Last Lemming]

9. How is cable news doing?

[llmart]

10. I was brought up to believe that reading a good newspaper......

was very, very important to being an informed citizen. But that was way back in the 50's and 60's. I always subscribed to a newspaper and read it cover to cover. Not any more. When all the stupid newspapers jumped on the bandwagon to report endless accounts of President Clinton's private life, I cancelled my subscription and vowed never to subscribe again. Newspapers nowadays aren't even good to line the birdcage with.

I hope they all go out of business with their crappy pablum they call "news."

[gratuitous]

11. I can't imagine why . . .

Of course, if they started doing their jobs again, I might find it worth my while to subscribe to a newspaper. But when I find myself better informed than the local fishwrap, when I can spot the plants and the bogus stories a mile away and the paper runs them anyway, when I can write a more perceptive and trenchant analysis of events in Washington than papers will full-time bureau chiefs in the Capitol, then I find that I would rather have money than a copy of such a spurious publication.

And I'm just a casual consumer of the news. Yet, time and again, I find myself reading a "news" story in the Oregonian, and knowing where it came from, whose interests it serves for the story to get out in quite the way and the time it's gotten out, and I know that once again they're being used. And that they're being used with their full knowledge and consent.

[CONN]

24. not doing their jobs, not looking for the 'real' stories ...

[RobinA]

33. Well...

if everyone interested in real news cancels their subscriptions causing them to go out of business, there's no chance for them to start doing their jobs again, is there? Who's going to do it?

[lolly]

46. Well, no need to post now

Gratuitous, you took the words right out of my fingers.

I will add, however, for the post above worrying that people are cancelling newspapers to watch cable--I don't think so. The people who watch cable/listen to Limbaugh for news cancelled long ago, or never subscribed. People cancelling in the last 3-4 years have probably discovered the internet, and realize that they're being lied to and mislead. These same people are also turning off cable news--CNN's ratings are plummeting as well.

Of course, the LATIMES and the Tribune are reading this as a sign that they're "too liberal" and are becoming more and more conservative. The TIMES allows a few liberal columnists once in a while (Scheer, 1 or 2 others, but never more than 1 at a time) and their "news" follows the Republican party line dictated by the increasingly reactionary editorial board (Michael Ramirez, the painfully unfunny knee-jerk wingnut cartoonist who gets published at least 6/7 days a week, is also on the editorial board).

If it were up to me, I'd let our subscription go, both to that and to Newsweek (which balances out its bi-weekly cover stories on Jesus with bi-weekly stories on unfaithful wives and the evils of women not getting married soon enough), but for unknown reasons my spousal unit keeps sending both rags more money.

[BadGimp]

13. that's cause most newspapers are..

[Straight Shooter]

14. Imagine that. People not wanting to spend money on birdcage liners.

What's WSJ got that you really, truly, cannot get online through other savvy financial sources?

Nothing much.

Chicago Tribune, phhhtttt.

edit: mistakes worthy of being a WSJ reporter :P

[cliss]

15. Guess where they all went?

To the Internet. I've read several articles that acknowledge that newspapers are losing readers because the news is "old" compared to the Net, there's also an infinitely larger selection on the Internet.

This has been going on for a while.

Now if people would just turn off their TV's like we have and go to the Internet, we'd start to see some results.

What do you think, Rupert?

[rzemanfl]

17. Pet paper-training crisis feared. N/t

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

18. I always took my newspaper reading VERY seriously

But now that I know what they're NOT reporting, I think they are a scam. They are strictly a vehicle for advertising, promos, flyers, etc. and the news gets the very least of their focus. I guess they are still ok to find out what local doings they report on and still useful for movie listings, etc. but definitely not as a source of news.

I hang in and read the New York Times and the Washinton Post because they still make me think that they might make a mistake and report something meaningful. The Daily Show and The New Yorker rock!! And the internets.

[customerserviceguy]

48. I've noticed that, too

The SLC Tribune is about 90% advertisements for underperforming, overpriced crap I either don't need or can't afford. I'm questioning the wisdom of chopping down all the trees, and burning up the gasoline to get this junk to my house. There are very few stories that I read that I didn't already see on the Internet the previous day.

[bemildred]

19. Tsk, I hear TV isn't what it used to be either. nt

[ixion]

21. USA Today should not be counted as a newspaper, IMO

It's just so much fluff, and very shallow (and biased) reporting.

[DoYouEverWonder]

25. Now a days, half the paper is just ads

Its just such a waste. I unwrap it and throw half of it in the recycling. I hope they all go the way of the dinosaur.

[Rainscents]

26. I also canceled News Paper when my Paper endorsed Bush in 2000.

[ckramer]

28. Why subscribe a newspaper while you can get everything from the web?

Newspapers are becoming a thing of the past in the long run and the internet is killing them.

I bet less and less people watch TV nowadays because of the internet, or because of them working two or three jobs busy making ends meet.

They should be free for people to pick up (joking). That's only way i will pick one up.

In Boston you have Metros (free), Pheonix (free), among several other free papers. I don't remember when was the last time I bought a copy of Herald or Globe when I saw these free papers are available side by side.

50 cents a day is a luxury for many poor working people.

[Book Lover]

29. As a print publishing professional, I say TS to the newspapers

Get better or shut up. I mean it. Train reporters to be reporters and not lick-spittles. I'm not denying the very real overall ad revenue decline for all print media (I lost at least one job because of it) but circ numbers are falling because people don't want to read your shit.

[Canuckistanian]

30. Fox News dumbing america down?

Why read the news in difficult-to-follow newspaper articles? Just watch Fox!
At Fox News, we do the heavy thinking so you don't have to!

[FloridaPat]

31. THere has to be something wrong with the USA Today circuation.

The price of the paper went up 50%. My dad buys this thing. There are a lot more papers not being sold then before they went to 75 cents. I find it hard to believe everyone liked the price increase and even more people decided to buy it at it's new price.

[Paulie]

35. Cheap paper in Hotels

Get them free for staying. Skews the circulation numbers. You know the hotels are not ordering exact copies needed per day.

In HS I would read the Chicago Sun Times everyday, it was a quarter. Read it cover to cover during my bus ride to school. It's in the tabloid format (like a magazine), really easy to read on a bus.

Stopped reading papers, they are always a day late. If they went multi-page indepth articles, I may consider reading again.

[UpInArms]

40. all the hotels subscribe and get megacopies

on a daily - that's where their subscription numbers are coming from.

As a paper, it's toilet.

[seg4527]

34. Everytime the Minneapolis Star-Tribune or St. Paul Pioneer Press Call me

I say "i get my news from alternative sources online".

They try to convince me that there is stuff that I can only get from papers. Like I've never read a newspaper before. The only stuff that I can get from there that they don't have on DU is coupons, dear abby, comics, and local sports. Big freaking loss there. *rolls eyse*

[babsbunny]

42. We cancelled

the Columbus Disgrace as soon as they endorsed Shrub. They are pure Shrub Propaganda!

[dad]

43. okay then, apparently i am the only person on DU who still readsnewspapers

WTF? I couldn't live without my morning paper!!

[bpilgrim]

44. we got DU

which filters out all the BS stories and gives us the news from around the world.

no newspaper can compete with that.

peace

[Tiberius]

52. Me, lunchtime

I don't understand all the animosity towards newspapers. I surely can't bring my laptop to lunch with me, nor would I want to.

The bottom line is that while most newspapers are fairly bland, they are still a FAR, FAR better way to get information than television.

[Beetwasher]

45. We ARE The Fucking FUTURE BABY!

Goodbye old media, just try and stop us!

Who owns the internet? Come on baby! WHO OWN'S IT!??!! You KNOW we do baby!! Oh Yeah! No way to ever really control this D'jinn, it's outta the bottle!

[nolabels]

47. I check it out when I have time because it's a good way to see......

What the CON's are feeding the uninformed populous. I can't even watch to news on the boob tube anymore it just gets me too angry just wondering who could possibly be watching that crap.

At least with the paper you can skim over it quickly

[earth mom]

50. The only time I buy a newspaper is on Fridays and Saturdays

for the garage sales. Oh yeah, and sometimes on Sunday if dh and I are looking to buy something (bigger purchases usually) and want to compare prices or if we need to get a coupon we found out we needed to get a better deal on something.

I have to add that sometimes I feel bad because I know that I may be helping to contribute to someone losing a job, but then I think about the corporate medias role in screwing this country and it's people over and that feeling quickly fades! :shrug:

[otohara]

51. We Won't Renew - Post Endorsed Bush

fuck em!

My bill came the other day for 2 year subscription renewal Denver Post. It will give me great pleasure to say buh, bye and tell them why.

[Crowdance]

53. Folks, this is nothing to cheer about

I'm reading posts proclaiming that you can read all you need to know on the web. The news you read on the web is gathered by newsrooms, and those newsrooms go away if the newspaper goes away. Reporters and editors get retrained to be English teachers, and they stop collecting the news you get to read on the web. What's left out here won't be NEWS, of that you can be sure.

It is NOT good for democracy if newspapers go away; these flawed institutions are our ONLY hope. We're never going to witness TV "News" doing investigative reporting of anything other than the bacteria count at falafel stands. Web news is so corrupted by opinion, propaganda, sensationalism and downright lies, that it can't rouse a population to do anything at all.

Think back to the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. It was newspapers doing that work. If we're to have hope of restoring democracy, we'll need the newspapers to do it.