If Advertisers Don’t Want You, Neither Do We
I finally got around to reading the New York Times article entitled: Why Big Newspapers Applaud Some Declines in Circulation . We all know the platitudes about the reason for newspaper journalism is to save democracy, but, let’s face it, for the people running newspapers, the reason is to sell advertising. If advertisers are not interested in you, neither are publishers. Read this part from the article:
Some large papers have made conscious decisions to limit their geographic range. The most striking recent example is The Dallas Morning News. Last year, it stopped distribution outside a 200-mile radius, and weekday circulation tumbled 15 percent to a little over 400,000. This year, the paper imposed a 100-mile limit. It expects to show another drop in sales when new figures are reported this month.
“We were distributing in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, way down in south Texas,” said Jim Moroney, the publisher and chief executive. “It cost too much money getting the papers to those places, and this clearly wasn’t anything our advertisers were giving us value for.”
Many of the readers who were cut loose complained, “but I have no regrets,” he said. “The people who really want to read The Dallas Morning News can still get it online.”
I would say these readers are ripe for the picking by publishers or new news organizations who care more about their readers than they do about their advertisers. Of course, that’s why I am pushing my Representative Journalism idea. People pay for the journalism that they want, and the advertising, if there is any, is incidental.
