Why Is It Whenever We Write About Newspapers These Days the Operative Word that Keeps Cropping Up Is “Cut”?

And in keeping with its intent that it be known as a truly national newspaper, The Times recently got rid of its separate news sections for New Jersey, Connecticut, Westchester and Long Island and instead now publishes a combined regional weekly. There went four news editors and several reporting jobs.

ftm background

William Dean Singleton Bought At A Premium Four McClatchy “Orphans” From Its Knight-Ridder Purchase, Putting His Money Where His Mouth Is In Saying Newspapers Have A Rich Long Future
With so much bad news being debated about newspapers – falling circulation, loss of the young reader etc., -- a breath of Texan fresh air entered the debate last week. William Dean Singleton, ceo of the MediaNews Group, told an editors convention that newspaper printing presses were not going the way of the dinosaur.

Ad Revenues at VG, Norway’s Largest Newspaper, Are About Equal Between Newspaper And Its Web Site, But Costs Are A Different Story -- So What, It’s All One Multi-Platform Brand, Isn’t It?
VG, Norway’s largest newspaper has tried just about everything to keep its print circulation and advertising revenues stable, but that’s a tough act given that the country’s broadband penetration level is one of the world’s highest, about 70% of the population accesses the Internet, and that 60% of its readers have said flat out they prefer to read news on the Internet rather than in the newspaper.

If You’re Looking for Online Convergence Between Print and the Web Then Check Out the Financial Sections Where Integration Is Furthest Along. And Also Note How Print Is Dumping Stock Tables – Something That Makes the “Bean Counters” Happy, But Gives One Less Reason To Buy A Newspaper
One reason that the Financial Times has seen its UK circulation drop below 100,000 is that the competitor general newspapers – particularly The Times and The Daily Telegraph -- have improved their coverage to the extent that one doesn’t really have to buy a financial daily any more to know what is going on in the financial world.

As the Price of Newsprint Increases the Size of a Newspaper’s Page Narrows Or Its Paper Thickness is Reduced; The Next Step Is To Take The Paper Out of Newspaper
Seldom does a day pass that some major newspaper like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal doesn’t announce that it is narrowing the width of its pages, or reducing its paper weight thickness, to save on newsprint costs. It’s a similar scenario to 10 years ago when newsprint reached its price peak.

New York Times Company and Knight-Ridder Announce Further Layoffs Based on Glum Advertising Forecasts Triggering Major Sell-Offs As Major US Newspaper Groups See Their Shares Sink Below 52-Week Lows
It was only last May that the New York Times Company announced 195 layoffs so another internal “Arthur” and “Janet” note this week so soon afterwards announcing another 500 employees are to go – 4% of its workforce -- has rocked the US newspaper establishment. “Arthur” is Arthur Sulzberger Jr, chairman of the New York Times Company and publisher of the New York Times, and “Janet” is Janet Robinson, president and CEO. When they talk of hard times ahead the whole industry shudders.

Back at the Journal, a major project is now underway to review its news gathering operations in order to reduce duplication and better target its various readers – print and electronic. Many WSJ staff believe it’s basically an exercise to cut (there’s that word again) staff and they don’t have to look much further than rival The Financial Times that just announced it had finished installing a super-dooper news editing system that lets editors file to the newspaper and the web and, hey, by the way, 51 staff are out!

And lets not forget that The Times has dumped most of its stock tables (as have other papers like the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune) under the guise that information is better found up to date on the web (but we all understand it is really to cut newsprint usage), and The Times has dumped its television listings, opting for the Internet for those, too.

And then there are newspapers like the Baltimore Sun that are cutting (sorry, there’s that word again) back on their foreign bureaus, and the Chicago Tribune that has announced that 40 vacant positions are to be eliminated and another 80- jobs are to go. Add all of this together and you get the very real impression that newspapers believe that to maintain those existing operating profits while they wait for the Internet to have real revenue meaning (at least 25% of total income and probably will take at least five years to get there) there is nothing else to do but cut, cut, and cut.

But they are also looking to new ways to add new revenues. The Journal, for instance, has announced it is going to start accepting advertising on its front page starting in January. Now for Europeans, that’s no big deal, but US newspapers have tended to shy away from that with the exception of USA Today and some other Gannett newspapers.

The Journal has been putting ads on some of the front pages of its various sections, and one still remembers when they produced their dummy for the their compact Wall Street Journal Europe last year the effect of that large color Cartier ad in the lower right corner and how it really caught attention and got everyone excited. But the front page of its US edition’s main news section is breaking new ground. The newspaper figures it can get anywhere from $75,000 and up for the single square-shaped space it will make available. You do the math – that’s million of dollars in ad revenue on a front page that, for the demographics it hits, has to be of great value to many companies, whether financial or in the luxury trade. Kind of makes you wonder why they didn’t do it before?

Back at The Times, it is coming up on its one-year anniversary for the start of its TimesSelect Internet service in which most of the newspaper’s most sought-after columnists are available only for a $49.95 annual fee if you are not a Times print subscriber.

When it started most people said there would be few people willing to pay for such news content, but the Times has announced that the service now has 513,000 customers of whom 37% are paying the $49.95. That math works out to about 190,000 paying subscribers with an annual turnover of near $9.5 million. And remember, that is for something that until a year ago they were giving away. And not only that, but because that audience is considered “special” the newspaper charges advertisers higher ad charges to be on those web pages. Talk about the best of both worlds.

The Times saw its online properties produce $66,1 million last quarter which is 7.7% of total revenue. Ad revenue growth was about 25% although About.com’s revenue jumped 63%. Assuming print income stayed steady and The Times was able to grow its digital revenue to 25% of total income then digital would account for in excess of $250 million quarterly. No longer pretty cash. In its 2nd quarter results The Times announced total ad revenue was up 1%, online revenue was up 35%. Enough said.

For Dow Jones, the parent of The Wall Street Journal, about 56% of its total revenue comes from print and 24% comes from electronic publishing – the WSJ’s web site is the only all-subscription newspaper site and it has more than 700,000 subscribers. It had a difficult time absorbing Marketwatch, for which it paid $520 million, but it is beginning to see the fruits of those labors. The remaining 20% of its income is from its community newspapers.

The WSJ has had a hard few years with financial advertising dropping off somewhat precariously, but the Journal introduced a Saturday edition last year targeted at the luxury goods advertiser who wants to attract people with money. It also did its share of cutting, sending overseas senior expatriates back home, and dumping its share of CNBC.

Both the NYT and the WSJ need to be a bit careful, however, as they put in place their new page widths. Both will add some pages, but at the end of the day the total news hole will go down. And readers do notice things like that. And as if papers don’t have enough problems keeping their current readership the last thing they need are readers believing that a change in size results in their being short-changed.

People complained in Europe and Asia about the new compact editions of the Wall Street Journal because they believed those newspapers did not contain as much news as they did when they were broadsheets, and there were too many references to tell people to find further information on the Internet. And they complained loudly enough for the WSJ to make some changes.

Bill Keller, the Times’ executive editor, said he didn’t think the 5% reduction would make any difference in the number of stories covered and that natural word wastage would take care of the decrease. He explained, “I’m convinced that, with good editors and a little time, I could take 5% out of today’s paper and actually make it better.”

Why Is It Whenever We Write About Newspapers These Days the Operative Word that Keeps Cropping Up Is “Cut”?

The New York Times has announced it is cutting the width of its pages in 2008, and consolidating printing in one plant with the loss of 250 jobs and a 5% cut in the news hole. The Wall Street Journal previously announced a similar width reduction for 2007.