The drop in print ad revenue by three-fifths in the last decade has been only offset to the tune of around 12% by its online equivalent. A trend that does not appear to be changing. General interest newspapers are in free fall.
The Economist
suggest becoming specialist publishers, and no doubt this is good advice. The problem, of course, is that the Content Marketing juggernaut is going the same way with free, ultra-relevant, expert-led content.
American dailies lost around $30 billion in ad spending between 2005 and 2014, or 60% of the total. Each drop in revenues is being met, in most cases, with a fresh cull of newsroom staff (see chart)... The cuts have helped to limit short-term damage to publishers’ bottom lines, but the outlook is bleak... One way that newspapers may be able to attract more advertising, or even get more readers to pay for news, is to identify new areas of specialist coverage that people find invaluable.
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