Newspaper Industry Decline | featured news

For the beleaguered newspaper industry, the good news may be that the bad news isn’t getting worse. Newspaper revenue fell just 2 percent last year compared with 2011, according to new data compiled by the Newspaper Association of America, the industry’s main trade group.

Years of newsroom cutbacks have had a demonstrable impact on the quality of digital, newspaper and television news and in how consumers view that work, a study released Monday found. Nearly one-third of consumers surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism said they have abandoned a news outlet because it no longer gave them what they had counted on, either with fewer or less complete stories.

New York Times profit tripled in the fourth quarter thanks to one-time items, including the sale of its share in Indeed.com, but the underlying business continued to erode on sharp advertising declines.

Is the newspaper business dead? John Garrett's hyperlocal chain in Texas suggests there's still life in the old medium.

A major Southern California newspaper is defying conventional wisdom by spending heavily to expand in print... New and expanded sections to cover business, automobiles and food. A nearly five-fold increase in community news pages and more investigative reporting. Even daily color comics. It feels like a throwback to an earlier era at the Orange County Register, where a first-time newspaper owner is defying conventional wisdom by spending heavily to expand the printed edition and playing down digital formats.

Newspaper companies are trying to cut costs by shutting down the printing presses and laying off staff, but unless they have a strategy for managing the transition from print to digital, all they are doing is liquidating the goodwill of a generation of readers and advertisers.

... just 14 percent of those who consume news on tablets said they have paid for news content on their devices. Another 23 percent, though, pay for a print subscription that includes tablet content. So in all, about a third of tablet news consumers have paid to access news on their gadgets.

In a deteriorating advertising climate, the company said it would seek to eliminate roughly 50 jobs through attrition and buyouts.

A majority of Americans don't seem to recognize the value of their local newspaper. According to a survey from the Pew Research Center, most people say they wouldn't miss local news if their newspaper no longer existed.

New York Times Co. expects ad revenue to fall a steeper-than-expected 8% in the third quarter, with as much as a 3% decline in digital-ad sales.