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Newspapers Beaten to a Pulp

Ryan Goldberg Oct 02, 2008 12:30 pm


		Old-fangled medium fights for survival.

Newspapers continue to cut staff, and in some extreme cases, shutter their newsrooms to save money. The Bergen Record, the second largest newspaper in New Jersey, recently closed its Hackensack offices. Bergen County’s demographics are choice for advertisers: Affluent, educated, and older. It’s just not enough; newspapers can no longer rely on print advertisements for survival.

Meanwhile, the new world order for the whole industry seems to be arriving sooner than previously expected. Earlier this month, McClatchy announced its second major staff reduction in 3 months, which will shave off 10% of its work force. And the Newark Star-Ledger, the largest newspaper in New Jersey, is teetering on the brink of collapse - despite its tight grip on an affluent market. If the Ledger can’t meet a certain level of buyouts by October 1st, it will be put up for sale.

One obvious culprit for the newspaper's demise is often overlooked: Craigslist. Newspapers never made their money on selling the news - they made it by selling classified ads. Those small-print pages right behind the comic strips were their bread and butter.

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Craigslist, however, which was founded in 1995, took the wanted ads online and offered them for free. As of September 2007, Craigslist had established itself in approximately 450 cities in 50 countries. In turn, newspapers lost their primary source of revenue.

It's worth noting that most newspaper companies are in fact profitable - or were until recently. They just aren’t profitable enough.

To me, this is a sorry state of affairs: Newspapers are an essential part of the public trust. But as papers cut costs to buoy stock prices, they become less equipped to cover the news. As responsible, in-depth journalism falls by the wayside, newspapers can no longer offer their readers a unique perspective on the city in which they live.


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Anne Abler

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10-03-2008, 12:23 pm
Like the man sings: "I guess I'll get the paper and go home!!!" The NEW ORLEANS Picayune is the model you seek. If you want to know what is really going on, put your quarters in their box! After you read the front pages---you will Read More

William Sinacori

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10-03-2008, 11:15 pm
It seems you are overlooking part of the problem, namely the bias to the nth degree is causing people to no longer pick up the newspaper. Thus, there are no readers that will peruse the ads or the classifieds. Many papers report increased circulati Read More


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