Polishing the Brass on the Titanic

The Audit Bureau of Circulation, which calculates newspaper circulation numbers in the United States, has released the totals for the six-month period from March-September. Let's just say they aren't very pretty.

When compared to the circulation numbers from March-September of 2008, only one of the top 25 newspapers in the United States has seen an increase an increase in circulation. That paper, the Wall Street Journal, is up a whopping 0.6 percent. As for the other 24, its not only that they are down, but how badly they are down. Here's a sampling:

USA Today: -17.2%
New York Times: -7.3%
Washington Post: -6.4%
New York Post: -18.8%
Houston Chronicle: -14.2%
Boston Globe: -18.5%
Dallas Morning News: -22.2%
San Francisco Chronicle: -25.9%

These aren't papers that no one cares about; these are some of the most important papers in the country. And some of them have lost one out of every five or six readers in the span of a year. Megan McArdle thinks this is more than just a bad stretch:

"I think we're witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it. The economics just aren't there. At some point, industries enter a death spiral: too few consumers raises their average costs, meaning they eventually have to pass price increases onto their customers. That drives more customers away. Rinse and repeat . . ."

McArdle, who stood in front of me and about 40 other enterprising young journalists back in June and tried to assure us there would be some kind of future in the business, is not the only one who says newspapers are circling the drain.

Paul Gillin, of Newspaper Death Watch, says that newspaper circulation today is lower than it was in 1940, the first year for which data on circulation is available. Back then, 31 percent of people read a newspaper. Today, it's less than 13 percent. Even worse, in 1940 there were 118 newspapers published for every 100 households in the United States. Ten years ago, there were 53 per 100 households. Today, that total is less than 33 per 100 households.

On the plus side, the ABC also released the top 10 circulation gainers during the past year. Then again, I think it's a top 10 list because there weren't enough papers with positive numbers to make a full top 25.

Maybe it's time I read the writing on the wall and gave up on this kind of career.

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More Good News

Maybe I should just accept the fact that I'm probably not going to be working for a newspaper and start thinking about other careers. If the fact that newspapers are dying wasn't going to make it tough enough for people like me to find a job, now it appears that younger journalists have even more odds stacked against them.

For an industry that is trying to become more relevant online and with younger readers, you might think that newspapers would want to keep their younger employees around, but it turns out that's not the case. As more newspapers are forced to layoff employees to cut costs, younger employees are usually the ones fired, mostly thanks to union rules.

Newspaper Death Watch summarizes the situation:

"The survey of 95 editors found that newsroom staffs have shrunk more than 10% in the last year and that workers between the ages of 18 and 35 were the most likely to be shown the door. This information comes at a time when newspapers are desperately struggling to become relevant to precisely that age group. It’s not that the editors want to lay off all the young staff, but union rules require them to preserve the jobs of older – and more change-averse – employees at the expense of younger and cheaper workers."

In terms of shear numbers, more than 10 percent of newsroom jobs across the country have been cut in the past year. That's a total of more than 5,900 jobs.