Links

Saturday, March 17, 2012

And Now For More Boston Globe Bashing - VIII

I think it was Foucault who once famously said, "The Boston Globe ain't going anywhere".

Well, going south is going somewhere, isn't it?
The headlines about the US newspaper industry have never been so bleak.

In recent weeks, LinkedIn, the networking website, and the Council of Economic Advisers have reported that the press is “America’s fastest-shrinking industry”, measured by jobs lost; the Newspaper Association of America has shown that advertising sales have halved since 2005 and are now at 1984’s level; and the Pew Research Center has found that for every digital ad dollar they earned, they lost $7 in print ads.
But wait... there's more!
Departing executives and bankruptcy advisers have been among the few people making good money from newspapers. The chief executives of Gannett and the New York Times (The Boston Globe's parent company - ed.) left in recent months with packages worth $37m and $24m respectively, while advisers to Tribune’s Chapter 11 proceedings have earned $233m.

...

Publishers have focused particularly closely on the New York Times, which began charging for online content a year ago and counted 390,000 digital subscribers by December. Barclays Capital estimated this month that digital subscriptions could add $100m to the group’s annual circulation revenues, more than offsetting an estimated $50m-$60m annual decline in print advertising.
That hasn't stopped a certain commenter, insistent in the Globe's lifespan, from bailing out on them in 2008. Hypocrisy, writ large...

2 comments:

ObjectiveBruce said...

So they stopped printing a volume of books that specialized in retelling the life stories of people and events long dead and you think it portends the end of newspapers?

They're still selling hundreds of thousands of Boston Globes, every single day of the year.

Wishful thinking, even that engendered by spite, does not turn the fanciful dreams of fools into reality.

The Boston Globe ain't going anywhere, despite the wishes of fanboys, right wing kooks and The Great Schill.

Roger Bournival said...

'Interesting', that you responded to this post and not the previous one...

They're still selling hundreds of thousands of Boston Globes, every single day of the year.

Quite right - it's just that they're selling hundreds of thousands less than they used to, which is more or less the general thrust of these two posts. They don't call you Obtuse Bruce for nothing!

You know what? Maybe I won't out you, so to speak. The general opinion is that you're better off as is, so you can hang around here and continue your role as the blog's human piƱata.