I’ve been meaning to take a closer look at the the Seattle Times’ post-PI circulation numbers, but Crosscut’s Chuck Taylor has done much of the hard work for me.
But here’s what we know for sure: Today’s Seattle Times average weekday circulation of 263,588 is, by my calculations, 52,085 less — 16.4 percent less — than the 316,673 combined circulation of both papers a year ago.
So while the Times is touting a circulation gain of “an amazing 32.6 percent” and that “84 percent of the non-duplicated daily P-I subscribers are now Times subscribers,” the bigger picture of print newspaper circulation in Seattle is somewhere short of amazing, unless you’re talking about an amazing drop.
And I’d add to that analysis a reported 6-percent drop in circulation for the Times’ Sunday edition, revealing that the paper’s steady decline in readership (at least of the print variety) shows no signs of ebbing.
So what’s the solution? The Times’ braggadocio over its relative success in retaining P-I readers aside, it’s done nothing to address the long term problems that are eating away at its core business, and it can be fairly argued that its continued cutbacks in staff and coverage will only speed its decline. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if a morning paper, delivering yesterday’s news, isn’t as much an anachronism in the age of the Internet as the afternoon paper became during the heyday of TV evening newscasts. I’m not saying that there isn’t a rationale for a print edition, but timely delivery of actual news ain’t it.
To survive in print as a daily newspaper, the Times and other papers like it are going to have to re-imagine the medium, not simply in terms of the technology of content delivery, but in terms of the content itself. For in the end, whatever the market forces, readers are giving up their subscriptions because they just don’t find their local fish-wrappers a compelling enough product to be worth the price.
The P-I’s closure may have delayed the inevitable, but it does nothing to make it any less so.
I’m one of those former P-I readers who’s still getting the Times. It’s basically out of inertia, combined with my wish to have reading material on the bus to and from work.
It has been suggested to me that I could instead read a book. Seeing how atrocious, and how meager, the Times has become without its former competitor, I’ll probably take that advice some time soon. It’ll be easier to do within a week, once there are no box scores to review.
Go Phillies!!
The Times also doesn’t mention how many of the folks they’re counting as “subscribers” are actually getting the paper for nothing, or how many who try (like we’ve done) to cut back to weekend-only and been told, “Well, if it’s OK by you, we’ll keep delivering you the paper Monday through Friday at no charge for…oh, then next few weeks!”
Still, it’s something that the Times has hung onto that many P-I readers, contradicting the chorus (Goldy included) of naysayers and dire predictors who insist it’s all over for print – or, as Goldy says today, still over, wanting so badly for that to be true. The Times is now second only to the LA times in W. Coast circulation, bigger than the Oregonian and SF Chron (both of which benefited from the folding of their competitors in years past, and now are sliding today). We can all spin these numbers any way we want, and I’m no fan of F. Blethen, but this is a positive in an always negative shrinking j world, and it’s not going to kill you, Goldy, to see value in that.
Of course, one thing the Times didn’t mention is they also printed the P-I and got a cut of the P-I’s advertising revenues, so the loss of 16% of the P-I’s readers comes off the Times’ top and bottom lines.
Another thing the Times doesn’t emphasize is that declining circulation in an area of growing population isn’t a very good business metric, because the percentage of the population buying their paper is dropping even faster than circulation is.
I am a former P-I reader who tried the Times when the former folded and I was offered the automatic switch-over. After a few weeks we canceled, and I am quite certain I am not the only one. The Seattle Times was and is inferior to its former rival. Back in the 1970s, my father, a rock-ribbed Republican, hated the Times and consistently referred to it as “the Seattle Timid.”
Oh, and when I did cancel, they told me also that I could have a 7-day subscription for the price of a weekend one, forever. I thought to my self, “How do you expect to stay in business like that?”
Virtually all print newspapers are in serious trouble now. The Times, bless Frank Blethen’s pitch-black heart, seems ultimately destined for the ash heap of history. Couldn’t happen to an assholier-than-thou guy.
“For in the end, whatever the market forces, readers are giving up their subscriptions because they just don’t find their local fish-wrappers a compelling enough product to be worth the price.”
The Times’ real problem is competition from new packaging materials — plastic wrap, styrofoam peanuts, etc. No one ever bought newspapers for news content. They bought them for grocery coupons, shelf lining, stuffing boxes that will be mailed, wrapping garbage, etc. With the advent of other wrapping, lining, and stuffing media, newspapers are no longer the only game in town and have to find other ways of making themselves indispensable. It’s still hard to beat used newsprint for many applications, though, so newspapers aren’t dead yet.
When I was in journalism school, one of my professors told a story like this.
An ambitious young businessman bought a vintage newspaper in a small town. It was printed on an ancient press that used a nonstandard paper size. He could still buy newsprint to fit this press, but it cost extra. So, as a cost-saving move, he discarded the old press and bought a new one that used standard-size newsprint. Circulation immediately fell off a cliff. Within weeks, the 100-year-old paper was in danger of failing. Surprised and confused, he went around town knocking on doors of former customers to find out what had happened. He got an education: They all told him that all the homes in town were built with kitchen cabinets custom designed so their shelves were the same size as the newspaper pages, and generations of townspeople had been lining their kitchen shelves with the newspaper; but now that the pages didn’t fit the shelves anymore, the newspaper had no usefulness.
Gary @3,
Just because I foresee the potential death of print dailies in Seattle, doesn’t mean that I cheer the inevitable.
@3 “The Times is now second only to the LA times in W. Coast circulation”
That’s like saying the two guys left standing after the Battle of Verdun were now the biggest army in the world.
For the Times to be criticized by a Blogger boasting 12 regular’s under a variety of names has got to be….devastating!
Way to hit ’em where it hurts Goldy!
You are kind of like Olberman trying for ratings by endless chatter about his heroes…O’Reilly and Beck…who swamp him in the ratings! Even MadKow is like the little engine who wishes she could…be 1/10 as popular as her Conservative counterparts.
Yup Goldy, I’m sure the Seattle Times BigWigs are reaaaaaaally upset that a neighborhood reknowned Blogger is stickin’ it to ’em.
BTW—Does the Times have a Tip Jar like you do Goldy??
I canceled my Times subscription right after the Times endorsed Suzie.
It is just like MrC @11 to think the Times has a great business model, pandering to the right and loosing subscribers on the left.
Once the Times has shrunk small enough we can drown it in a bath tub.
As much as you seem to not like it here you never go away.
Go crawl back under your rock already.
@ 6: “Oh, and when I did cancel, they told me also that I could have a 7-day subscription for the price of a weekend one, forever. I thought to my self, “How do you expect to stay in business like that?”
The Times is gaming the system. Advertising rates are based on paid circulation, which is the only way advertisers have of guessing how many people actually read the paper. It’s a poor measure, to be sure – lots of people glance at the front page (no ads), then go directly to the comics or crossword puzzels. Some never read the paper at all, but do pull out the ad inserts to look for coupons – which helps the insert advertisers, but not the big stores paying for large ads in the news areas.
Because ad rates are based on circulation numbers, inflating the ad rates is considered to be fraudulent. A few years ago a magazine in New York (I forget the name) was caught doing that, it had stopped subtracting newstand returns from it’s paid subscription numbers. I think in that instance, the local prosecutors got involved.
Is refusing to recognize a partial cancellation (weekends only) fraudulent? Well, perhaps not, if viewed as being only a temporary price reduction. After all, the customer is paying for delivery, and just getting a bonus. But it certainly diminishes the value of the paper to advertisers, if people who receive it during the weekday don’t even want it.
We cancelled our newspaper subscriptions years ago. We found it was filling up our recycle box, most of the time it wasn’t even opened. By the time we get around to reading the paper, we’ve already gotten all our news online from multiple sources. These days the grocery stores are all sending their ads to us in the mail.
All things considered, however, I think Blethen & Co. are probably pleased with the numbers. They still retained most of the PI subscribers, and they don’t have to pay the PI their share of the JOA revenues.
But the subscription numbers don’t say anything about advertising revenue. I would think that most advertisers would expect a price reduction if they were being printed in only one newspaper, instead of two. And the economic situation must have hit the Times pretty hard – last January/February it looked like the Times was so thin that they could have printed it on six pages, had they tried.
What really could hurt the Times is if the EEOC rules that affirmative action requirements are satisfied by posting help wanted ads on Craig’s List, rather than in the newspaper. It seems to me that the only employers still advertising in the Times are the ones who are required, for one reason or another, to advertise in the hard-copy newspaper to be able to prove to the EEOC that their job openings were made known to the public at large.
Blethen’s last hope: that he and his brethern in the old-media newspaper business can talk Congress into requiring Google to divest some of it’s wealth to prop up the newspapers. They argue that Google is stealing their content, but the opposite is true – Google and other online sources are actually sending readers to their online sites.
The truth is that the Times wants a little socialism to flow in their direction – a revenue transfer from the wealthy innovaters to the dying dinosaur business models. All while editorializing in the other direction. Ironic, isn’t it?
It’s his Godly Christian Duty to come here and harass the heathens, since he’s been appointed as a proxy for God as a judge on them there Hellboud Aheists (all of us save for him, Puddy, Pissy Little Marvin and Sockpuppet ESO).
As Daddy Love says, he’s “assholier than thou”.
Lucky us, huh…
…NOT.
Times sales people periodically stop in my neighborhood to give away the paper– yes, I said give away. That is how they are boosting the numbers they have–by counting papers distributed I bet–and not by sales/subscriptions. I’m sure the extra recycling is helping to keeping a few Waste Management people on the payroll.
20: Well, if they are actually giving away papers without ANY payment, they better not be counting it as paid subscriptions, because that WOULD become a problem for them.
I suspect they are giving them away because they can’t sell them, they would have to pay to truck them to the recyclers, and they can justify it as a “marketing expense” (i.e., a “free sample”.
By the way, bookstores get credit for unsold books from the publishers. If they are paperbacks or magazines, nobody actually sends them to the publishers because the cost of transport exceeds their value. The bookstore employees just tear off the cover and send the covers back to get credit. The rest of the books end up in the dumpster.
I subscribe to the Sunday Times for $.22/week. I am not sure if it is worth it.