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USA Today No Longer Country's Largest Newspaper After 17% Drop In Circulation
Go long Gannett at your own peril (although the short squeeze has a little more to play out so you are probably cool for a few more days). According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, in a memo submitted to staff on Friday, "USA Today publisher David Hunke said the average circulation at the
Gannett Co.-owned newspaper was 1.88 million from April through
September. That marks a loss of 398,000 copies, or 17 percent, from the
same period the year before at the newspaper, which is printed on
weekdays only." The reason for this unprecedented drop, which will put the paper in second position behind a growing Wall Street Journal, is the "growth of online news and the slump in travel pummel the newspaper."
The reason for the Gannett empire's continuing asset value destruction is the "while most large dailies are struggling to hold on to print subscribers
and newsstand sales, USA Today is being hurt by a drop in traffic at
airports and hotels, the newspaper's mainstay. It also increased the
price of single copies to $1 from 75 cents last December."
Adding insult to injury, the WSJ, whose most recent daily circulation was 2.08, has confirmed GCI's fall from grace.
Dow Jones, the Journal's parent company, declined to give out the
newspaper's circulation figures for the period, but spokesman Robert
Christie said, "The Journal is now the largest newspaper by
circulation."
And so the continued shift from old to new media continues, with information increasingly becoming a commodity courtesy of millions of bloggers who mercilessly suck on the Google crawler's tentacles, grasping and reaching every single relevant bit of data about any and every topic discussed, usually seconds after its "accession" (the time frame of capture is the only reason why Twitter has any value currently; as Google closes in on this last valuation loophole, expect the founders of Twitter to promptly find solace in whatever final valuation round they can get their hands on). Yet this brings up the question: while it may be too late for Gannett, how will the remaining titans of the old media empire respond vis-a-vis this encroaching commoditization of information, and when will the Google bot finally be no longer welcome at the "News Corp., Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, Time Warner, etc." media complex. Ironically: the shift to "old school" information dissemination may be the only thing that can save MSM at this point (or at least give it some more years of breathing room). Its occurrence is likely just a matter of time, especially with Rupert Murdoch (and soon many others) finally deciding he has had enough of pesky secondary regurgitators.
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USA Today can add their slanted front page to the list of reasons. I see the front pages on the news stands and in the boxes, and I pass on their bias.
Excellent news!! Another dead man walking starting to crumple in their overcrowded old media world. Maybe they can get Sam Zell to buy 'em on a LBO deal? Bloomberg maybe? NBC? Come on guys, start circling the wagons as the pesky bloggers & internet keeps slinging arrows into your dead carcasses.
Let's save trees, ink, wasted salaries on hack writers & needless CEO's, dispensing stale, biased, dumbed down information in an obsolete format. Time to liquidate these dinosaurs.
If you call circulation, free paper at your hotel room door, than no wonder circulation drops with hotel occupancy rates...
Does USA Today actually qualify as a newspaper? :)
Seriously, though, I do wonder how much of the dropoff in circulation is due to hotels buying fewer copies, in turn due to greatly reduced hotel occupancy and business travel.
I suspect I'm not the only person here who, as a business traveler, uses their laptop and blackberry to get their real news, and randomly tosses the free copy of USA Today into their briefcase for reading on the airplane before passing 10,000ft.
One of Paul Fussell's books goes off on a rant against the USA Today. One of the points is how they designed their newspaper box to look like a TV, because that's consistent with the dumbed-down version of the news they're peddling.
the sooner the current information format dies, the better ...
going oldschool is the rational solution which is exactly why the msm is not goig to adapt and istead go more towards pay per content format, hedging its survival on its name alone. (then theres the opposite approach which I like better)
the internet and its darling the blogoshpere are the last fronteir of information. there aint to way of containing it, much less stopping it.
There are soon to be even more upscale houses on the market in/around Reston... and every other city they have a property in.
Corporate media has a credibility gap to fill - with more B.S. apparently - and they wonder why circulation is dropping?
Seriously, how many copies of USA Today do you throw away annually? I've never paid for a copy, and I seem to get free copies everywhere -- which I always toss.
Their circulation numbers must be pure bs.
USA Today is Too Big to Fail anyway. MOT before we get them some TARP $.
They can all poke each others eyes out with blame. To me it couldn't be more clear that people have an insatiable desire for the truth. What does it say when I read news from the UK across the pond, that describes exactly what story over in the US is. "just the facts ma'am" is all I ask.
edit
I live in Formby near Liverpool and at 73 years old I would have never thought I would stop buying newspapers.
Since I was 12 then a newspaper deliverer I have bought a newspaper every day moving from Daily Dispatch-News Chronicle-Daily Telegraph-Financial Times and finally the Times.
Since the start of 2009 I may have bought 3 or 4 copies.Now like a lot of other people I read the newspapers on line .The most important change are reading blogs which give me great pleasure and give you a better perspective than the wider media.My view newspapers are in a big decline.
Not to worry, Obama and Congress will save the day for Gannett and the other dinosaurs (the ones that gave $$$ to the campaigns that is).
Just follow the lead by Argentina and take over the news:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aLWUKJC3baHI
Come to think of it, the US is modeling itself after Argentina, at least currency-wise.
I received a gift from Changhigh and it was wrapped in crumpled USA today...lol
He's telling the employees of USA Today to get
ready. Merry Bustmas.
Hey Murdock, ever hear or robots.txt? It's been around since 1994 or so, and you can use that to make google and evey other search engine leave you alone. Just what you want, right?
USA YESTERDAY is more apt and who wants yesterday's news?
michael linden
Oregon