First Quarter Newspaper Revenues Continue to Decline
The Newspaper Association of America released their newspaper revenue figures for Q1′ of this year and the results are far from pretty. According to the NAA, the revenues publishers are experiencing now are in parallel to the results of 1985. What is more troubling is that online advertising, once thought to be the saving grace for newspaper publishers, also saw a decline when compared to last year. The online revenue declines are more than likely a blend of two factors; the economy and the lack of agility within publisher organizations, when it comes to innovative actions for their online properties.
The greatest decline in newspaper revenues came in the classified verticals, but that is no surprise as pure-play online competitors (i.e. Craigslist, Kijiji) have reinvented the industry, through offering a free classified model, successfully. I would expect that classified sales will continue to decline for newspaper publishers, but the true mark of their survival and or improvement will be their ability to continually increase their online and overall new media revenues. And this is no easy task, as even successful social networking properties, with unprecedented traffic, are finding it difficult to come up with the ideal online revenue model.
