pickens's Journal: Newspaper Readership Declining Sharply

Paid circulation at major newspapers in the United States declined sharply this year with readership at 609 papers that filed on Sunday falling 3.5% to 46,771,486. With the business model under extreme pressure, publishers have been whittling back on circulation considered to be less useful by advertisers and increasing their internet presence. While newspapers now generate only a fraction of their income from their web sites -- online profits margins have been skyrocketing worldwide and now account for an average of 5.5% of total ad revenue and is projected to hit 10% by 2008-2009. Last week the NY Times provided an especially good example of how newspapers are tailoring their stories for the internet when they published a story by writer Tom Bissell on his climb up Mount Kilimanjaro and supplemented the story with an Interactive Kilimanjaro Climb documenting Bissell's climb with 3D maps and video.