On the brink

America's Audit Bureau of Circulations reported that for the 530 biggest dailies, average circulation in the past six months was 3.6% lower than in the same period a year earlier; for Sunday papers, it was 4.6% lower. Ad revenues are plunging across the board: by 22.3% at Media General, for example. In 2007 total newspaper revenues fell to $42.2 billion, not to be sniffed at, certainly, but a lot less than the peak of $48.7 billion in 2000. Much of this decline is being blamed on the rise of the Internet, which offers free, round-the-clock coverage, and which has provided a new, better home for classified advertising, once the bedrock of most newspapers' revenue. But some of the fall in revenues is actually due to the economic slowdown in America, and especially in the housing market, which contributes a large slice of classified advertising. The credit crunch has also come at a bad time for a group of new newspaper owners, who used loans that were readily available until last summer to buy their way into the business, but must now be having second thoughts.
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11294258