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.
--
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
More Bad News
At least it's bad news presented in graph form (as we've been over before, I love graphs). But, as I continue to pursue a potential career in journalism, this certainly doesn't look good.
Michael Mandel, of BusinessWeek, just wrote a comprehensively negative report on the state of journalism in America. Derek Thompson of The Atlantic comments:
"this is, sadly, perhaps the 21st century equivalent of studying northern Atlantic nautical charts in your bedroom chamber on the Titanic. But these charts are still useful!"
So how fast is the ship sinking? If these are to be believed, what the industry is going through right now is simply the exaggeration of a trend that began in the early '90 and picked up speed around 2000 (which is just about the time a little thing called the Internet became more or less ubiquitous). In fact, Mandel makes the case that journalism's decline is worse than that of industry.
But its not limited to just newspapers. News periodicals seem to be on a similar path, though the decline is not as dramatic. Even television news is suffering through a downturn, but this seems to be more of a recent occurrence and not a long-term trend. At least not yet.
And then there's this, from Google Trends via Reason, that shows the online readership (in terms of Daily Unique Visitors) for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Huffington Post. Two years ago, the WaPo was the clear leader, and they maintained a strong edge until the run-up to the election last year (that's the spike for all three). Since then, all three have been in a virtual dead-heat.
So, just to recap, in the past two years the HuffPo has doubled their online readership while the Washington Post has seen their readership more or less cut in half. The WSJ still gets about the same, (and lets be honest, that paper will always have a pretty stable readership because of the financial coverage) making it a good control for a study like this.
I doubt the Washington Post is the only paper to have seen such a dramatic slide in the past year. It's not good news for the news.
Michael Mandel, of BusinessWeek, just wrote a comprehensively negative report on the state of journalism in America. Derek Thompson of The Atlantic comments:
"this is, sadly, perhaps the 21st century equivalent of studying northern Atlantic nautical charts in your bedroom chamber on the Titanic. But these charts are still useful!"
So how fast is the ship sinking? If these are to be believed, what the industry is going through right now is simply the exaggeration of a trend that began in the early '90 and picked up speed around 2000 (which is just about the time a little thing called the Internet became more or less ubiquitous). In fact, Mandel makes the case that journalism's decline is worse than that of industry.
But its not limited to just newspapers. News periodicals seem to be on a similar path, though the decline is not as dramatic. Even television news is suffering through a downturn, but this seems to be more of a recent occurrence and not a long-term trend. At least not yet.
And then there's this, from Google Trends via Reason, that shows the online readership (in terms of Daily Unique Visitors) for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Huffington Post. Two years ago, the WaPo was the clear leader, and they maintained a strong edge until the run-up to the election last year (that's the spike for all three). Since then, all three have been in a virtual dead-heat.
So, just to recap, in the past two years the HuffPo has doubled their online readership while the Washington Post has seen their readership more or less cut in half. The WSJ still gets about the same, (and lets be honest, that paper will always have a pretty stable readership because of the financial coverage) making it a good control for a study like this.
I doubt the Washington Post is the only paper to have seen such a dramatic slide in the past year. It's not good news for the news.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Michelle Obama goes shopping, shuts down city
For most of us, stopping at a local farmer's market or produce stand is nothing more than a quick errand. Not so for Michelle Obama. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank explains:
"The Secret Service and the D.C. police brought in three dozen vehicles and shut down H Street, Vermont Avenue, two lanes of I Street and an entrance to the McPherson Square Metro station. They swept the area, in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with bomb-sniffing dogs and installed magnetometers in the middle of the street, put up barricades to keep pedestrians out, and took positions with binoculars atop trucks. Though the produce stand was only a block or so from the White House, the first lady hopped into her armored limousine and pulled into the market amid the wail of sirens."
There's nothing like shutting down a few city blocks and a Metro station in the name of buying your groceries. And sure, maybe eating organic, locally grown produce is worth inconveniencing tons of other people in the city. Maybe. But wouldn't you think the Obamas would be a little more concerned about the impact this shopping trip had on the environment? As Milbank points out, each item purchased would have a carbon footprint of several tons when you consider all the vehicles that had to be dispatched to make the trip possible.
Part of the "shopping trip" involved a brief speech by the First Lady about the importance of eating healthy. According to Milbank:
"She spoke of her own culinary efforts: "There are times when putting together a healthy meal is harder than you might imagine."
Particularly when it involves a sound stage, an interpreter for the deaf, three TV satellite trucks and the closing of part of downtown Washington. "
"The Secret Service and the D.C. police brought in three dozen vehicles and shut down H Street, Vermont Avenue, two lanes of I Street and an entrance to the McPherson Square Metro station. They swept the area, in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with bomb-sniffing dogs and installed magnetometers in the middle of the street, put up barricades to keep pedestrians out, and took positions with binoculars atop trucks. Though the produce stand was only a block or so from the White House, the first lady hopped into her armored limousine and pulled into the market amid the wail of sirens."
There's nothing like shutting down a few city blocks and a Metro station in the name of buying your groceries. And sure, maybe eating organic, locally grown produce is worth inconveniencing tons of other people in the city. Maybe. But wouldn't you think the Obamas would be a little more concerned about the impact this shopping trip had on the environment? As Milbank points out, each item purchased would have a carbon footprint of several tons when you consider all the vehicles that had to be dispatched to make the trip possible.
Part of the "shopping trip" involved a brief speech by the First Lady about the importance of eating healthy. According to Milbank:
"She spoke of her own culinary efforts: "There are times when putting together a healthy meal is harder than you might imagine."
Particularly when it involves a sound stage, an interpreter for the deaf, three TV satellite trucks and the closing of part of downtown Washington. "
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Technically, it's Change
But I think violating Habeas Corpus is pretty much the same no matter where you do it. Apparently, the Obama Administration does not agree.
During the campaign, Obama (and pretty much every other Democrat, Independent, and even some Republicans) regularly criticized Bush's policies in Guantanamo Bay. However, as the Washington Independent reports, the new policies being enacted at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan (one of the major detention centers in the nation) sound like "GTMO", Part II.
“They’re setting up what amounts to a CSRT,” said David Remes, the legal director of the non-profit Appeal for Justice law firm who represents 19 Guantanamo detainees. A CSRT is the acronym for a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, the old mechanism at Guantanamo to adjudicate not a detainee’s guilt or innocence, but whether he constituted a threat to U.S. national security. Detainees were at the mercy of hearsay evidence and had the burden of proving that they weren’t a threat and the government’s case against them was erroneous. The Bush administration contended that CSRTs provided all the process rights to which Guantanamo detainees were entitled."
The Washington Post actually heralds this as a victory for the rights of prisoners, since the new policies mean that indefinite detentions can be challenged. But the truth is hidden a few paragraphs down the page:
"Under the new rules, each detainee will be assigned a U.S. military official, not a lawyer, to represent his interests and examine evidence against him. In proceedings before a board composed of military officers, detainees will have the right to call witnesses and present evidence when it is "reasonably available," the official said."
If you're going to have a "trial" where the prosecution and the judges work for the same organization (in this case, the U.S. military), I don't think that really counts as a fair trial. Not to mention the fact that you would be assigned another member of the military to act as your defense council. Surely, this is a huge step forward for the prisoners at Bagram. Now, instead of being held indefinitely without a trial, they will be given a sham trial that will "justify" holding them indefinitely.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying that we should make it easier for terrorists to be released from prisons (least of all in Afghanistan). If we want to hold them indefinitely for being enemy combatants who are a security risk, then so be it. But let's stop pretending like we are giving them a fair shake.
During the campaign, Obama (and pretty much every other Democrat, Independent, and even some Republicans) regularly criticized Bush's policies in Guantanamo Bay. However, as the Washington Independent reports, the new policies being enacted at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan (one of the major detention centers in the nation) sound like "GTMO", Part II.
“They’re setting up what amounts to a CSRT,” said David Remes, the legal director of the non-profit Appeal for Justice law firm who represents 19 Guantanamo detainees. A CSRT is the acronym for a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, the old mechanism at Guantanamo to adjudicate not a detainee’s guilt or innocence, but whether he constituted a threat to U.S. national security. Detainees were at the mercy of hearsay evidence and had the burden of proving that they weren’t a threat and the government’s case against them was erroneous. The Bush administration contended that CSRTs provided all the process rights to which Guantanamo detainees were entitled."
The Washington Post actually heralds this as a victory for the rights of prisoners, since the new policies mean that indefinite detentions can be challenged. But the truth is hidden a few paragraphs down the page:
"Under the new rules, each detainee will be assigned a U.S. military official, not a lawyer, to represent his interests and examine evidence against him. In proceedings before a board composed of military officers, detainees will have the right to call witnesses and present evidence when it is "reasonably available," the official said."
If you're going to have a "trial" where the prosecution and the judges work for the same organization (in this case, the U.S. military), I don't think that really counts as a fair trial. Not to mention the fact that you would be assigned another member of the military to act as your defense council. Surely, this is a huge step forward for the prisoners at Bagram. Now, instead of being held indefinitely without a trial, they will be given a sham trial that will "justify" holding them indefinitely.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying that we should make it easier for terrorists to be released from prisons (least of all in Afghanistan). If we want to hold them indefinitely for being enemy combatants who are a security risk, then so be it. But let's stop pretending like we are giving them a fair shake.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Final Tally on "Clunkers"
"Cash for Clunkers" officially ended on Monday evening, so what did Americans buy with nearly $3 billion? Lots of foreign cars.
Here's the final numbers on the program, which cost a total of $2.9 billion (so how long will it be before a political is tauting that it came in "under budget", despite the fact that it actually cost 300% what the initial budget was?), courtesy of the Washington Post. The most interesting thing is that the top 10 models traded in as "clunkers" are all American-made cars, while only two of the top ten models purchased through the program were born in the USA. Those two? The Ford Focus (#4) and the Ford Escape (#10).
Toyota made out the best from the program, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the market during August (compared to just 17 percent from January to July of this year), while Honda saw their market share bump up from 11 percent to 13 percent.
As for gas mileage, the average car traded in got only 15.8 miles per gallon, while the average car purchased gets 24.9 miles per gallon. Even when you consider the fact that new cars always get better mileage (even if they are the exact same model), that increase is higher than I expected.
So if the program was intended to get gas guzzlers off the road (at least a fraction of them), and create insta-demand in the new car market, label this one a success.
However, if you want to look at this in any deeper, more meaningful, and analytic way.....not so fast. Already the car dealerships are concerned about the negative impact there will be on new car sales over the winter and into next year. Not to mention the impact that destroying all those cars will have on the used car market, which is going to see a significant drop in supply.
So 'Cash for Clunkers' might have helped the environment by the tiniest of tiny bits, and temporarily stimulated one sector of the economy, but it may have done so at the expense of both future supply and future demand.
I think Jeremy Anwyl of Edmunds.com, a automotive research group, sums it up well in the Washington Post:
"'Cash for Clunkers' created a nice little blip," he said. "We'll look back and say, 'Nice party, but the hangover is awful.' "
Here's the final numbers on the program, which cost a total of $2.9 billion (so how long will it be before a political is tauting that it came in "under budget", despite the fact that it actually cost 300% what the initial budget was?), courtesy of the Washington Post. The most interesting thing is that the top 10 models traded in as "clunkers" are all American-made cars, while only two of the top ten models purchased through the program were born in the USA. Those two? The Ford Focus (#4) and the Ford Escape (#10).
Toyota made out the best from the program, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the market during August (compared to just 17 percent from January to July of this year), while Honda saw their market share bump up from 11 percent to 13 percent.
As for gas mileage, the average car traded in got only 15.8 miles per gallon, while the average car purchased gets 24.9 miles per gallon. Even when you consider the fact that new cars always get better mileage (even if they are the exact same model), that increase is higher than I expected.
So if the program was intended to get gas guzzlers off the road (at least a fraction of them), and create insta-demand in the new car market, label this one a success.
However, if you want to look at this in any deeper, more meaningful, and analytic way.....not so fast. Already the car dealerships are concerned about the negative impact there will be on new car sales over the winter and into next year. Not to mention the impact that destroying all those cars will have on the used car market, which is going to see a significant drop in supply.
So 'Cash for Clunkers' might have helped the environment by the tiniest of tiny bits, and temporarily stimulated one sector of the economy, but it may have done so at the expense of both future supply and future demand.
I think Jeremy Anwyl of Edmunds.com, a automotive research group, sums it up well in the Washington Post:
"'Cash for Clunkers' created a nice little blip," he said. "We'll look back and say, 'Nice party, but the hangover is awful.' "
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Clunkers, Part II
I get SO MANY comments on this blog that sometimes it is difficult to find time to acknowledge all of them, even the very good ones. But, due to a general lack of anything else to discuss this evening, I'm going to temporarily yield the floor to one of the great plethora of comments that I have received about my post on the "Cash for Clunkers" program about a week ago:
According to the carbon footprint calculator at terrapass.com (look, I cite figures. Unlike your source article, where the per capita income comes out of nowhere), a 1999 Ford Explorer, a popular car in its heyday that I'm sure is seeing some trading in right now, emits 9.17 tons of CO2 each year; upgrading to a 2009 Ford Focus cuts down to 5.25 tons of CO2 per year. As long as a driver keeps their car for TWO YEARS, they have successfully offset the CO2 output figure you cite.
These numbers assume putting 15,000 miles per year on to the car, which seems an average figure. Terrapass also informs us, passed on the fuel efficiency standards of these models, that the Explorer would use 938 gallons of fuel per year while the new Focus would use 536. That saves 400 gallons of gas per year for the drivers of those new cars, which at an average of $2.55 per gallon (EIA statistic), saves those families $1020 each year. This now means more money for those families could choose to put into other sects of the economy, while also reducing oil consumption by 32,000,000 (32 million) gallons per year, considering that the same article you cited last says 80,000 cars have been upgraded in this program (which sad to say, apparently offsets less than one day of our nation's oil consumption).
Well, I don't think there was any need to get snarky with the "I cite real figures" thing, but I'll let that go for now.
She makes a valid argument in favor of why driving a Ford Focus is better for the environment than driving a Ford Explorer, but I don't think that comes as a real shock to anyone. The problem is, with the way the program is structured, the people who are trading in SUVs with really bad gas mileage, are not generally driving away in Ford Focuses (Foci??).
If you trade in a car that gets less than 18 MPGs (which is the only way to qualify for the $4,500 discount), you only need to purchase a new vehicle that gets 22 MPG. In other words, they set the bar too low, particularly when you consider that the government requires car manufacturers maintain an average of 25 MPG for all new cars they make. So if you drop off your Hummer H2, you can drive away in something like a Ford F-150 (a mid-sized pickup), which qualifies. Does that make the planet a whole lot better off? Maybe a little. But now you've got to choose between helping the environment a tiny little bit and all the negative outcomes of the program.
My dear reader continues to valiantly defend the "small successes are worth it" approach:
I think this program has brought into clear light the difference fuel efficiency, and other small changes, can make for both the economy and the environment, and for that reason is admirable. To call it a failure is unbelievably harsh, and while I admit there are flaws in the plan, I have not been convinced by a single article or report that this program is anything so cut and dry as either a failure or an outright success.
Ok, so maybe it's not an outright failure, but it's pretty close. Even members of the administration realize this is failing. From today's Washington Post:
“What we ended up with,” said one senior Obama administration official, who would not speak on the record because he was being critical of his own administration’s environmental bona fides, “is a program in which you trade in old clunkers for new clunkers.” Less discussed is the second critique of the program: It rewards drivers who chose to buy gas guzzlers a few years back, but not those who spent more to buy fuel-sippers.
I think that second point has been seriously understated. It's like rewarding a shoplifter with a $100 free shopping spree and hoping they stop stealing from you after that.
Now allow me to add another critique. I was speaking to a car dealer here in Rochester the other day (look, I use real sources too), and he brought up this point, which I hadn't though of before:
Assume that you are an individual living on low income, or even fixed income. There are certainly enough people like that in this country to consider them an important part of population. Now, you, as one of those people, would really love to get a new car, but even with the $4,500 rebate, you just can't scrape together enough money to afford a brand new car. So you will go out and try to find a reliable model with more than 100,000 miles on it that costs somewhere under two grand. According to this dealer I was speaking to, a pretty significant portion of the used car business is in these "heavily used but pretty cheap" cars.
Well, thanks to "Cash for Clunkers", much of the supply in that sector of the market has been destroyed. People that would normally trade their cars in years from now and buy a new one (allowing that old car to be sold off to someone with low or fixed income at a low price) are trading their cars in right now. The government mandates that all cars traded in through the program must be crushed, so they can't be resold. This means today's "clunkers" will not get the chance to be tomorrow's cheap bargains.
This will at least for a few years disproportionately hurt the poorest members of society, the ones who can't take advantage of the "Clunkers" program right now because it only covers new cars and won't be able to buy a old, cheap, crappy car in the future because there will be so few of them left.
So now the liberals have to choose: the environment or the poor people?
What you're left with a program that does not create new demand (it just shifts future demand forward), destroys the future of an important segment of the used car market, and rewards the people who have been causing the "problem" in the first place. All in the name of a tiny reduction in gasoline consumption, slightly better emission statistics, and a little bump in consumer confidence.
Like Third Eye Blind sings in their newest single: "half-measures are all half-assed" (funny, they wrote that as a critique of Bush....but it works for government in general)
According to the carbon footprint calculator at terrapass.com (look, I cite figures. Unlike your source article, where the per capita income comes out of nowhere), a 1999 Ford Explorer, a popular car in its heyday that I'm sure is seeing some trading in right now, emits 9.17 tons of CO2 each year; upgrading to a 2009 Ford Focus cuts down to 5.25 tons of CO2 per year. As long as a driver keeps their car for TWO YEARS, they have successfully offset the CO2 output figure you cite.
These numbers assume putting 15,000 miles per year on to the car, which seems an average figure. Terrapass also informs us, passed on the fuel efficiency standards of these models, that the Explorer would use 938 gallons of fuel per year while the new Focus would use 536. That saves 400 gallons of gas per year for the drivers of those new cars, which at an average of $2.55 per gallon (EIA statistic), saves those families $1020 each year. This now means more money for those families could choose to put into other sects of the economy, while also reducing oil consumption by 32,000,000 (32 million) gallons per year, considering that the same article you cited last says 80,000 cars have been upgraded in this program (which sad to say, apparently offsets less than one day of our nation's oil consumption).
Well, I don't think there was any need to get snarky with the "I cite real figures" thing, but I'll let that go for now.
She makes a valid argument in favor of why driving a Ford Focus is better for the environment than driving a Ford Explorer, but I don't think that comes as a real shock to anyone. The problem is, with the way the program is structured, the people who are trading in SUVs with really bad gas mileage, are not generally driving away in Ford Focuses (Foci??).
If you trade in a car that gets less than 18 MPGs (which is the only way to qualify for the $4,500 discount), you only need to purchase a new vehicle that gets 22 MPG. In other words, they set the bar too low, particularly when you consider that the government requires car manufacturers maintain an average of 25 MPG for all new cars they make. So if you drop off your Hummer H2, you can drive away in something like a Ford F-150 (a mid-sized pickup), which qualifies. Does that make the planet a whole lot better off? Maybe a little. But now you've got to choose between helping the environment a tiny little bit and all the negative outcomes of the program.
My dear reader continues to valiantly defend the "small successes are worth it" approach:
I think this program has brought into clear light the difference fuel efficiency, and other small changes, can make for both the economy and the environment, and for that reason is admirable. To call it a failure is unbelievably harsh, and while I admit there are flaws in the plan, I have not been convinced by a single article or report that this program is anything so cut and dry as either a failure or an outright success.
Ok, so maybe it's not an outright failure, but it's pretty close. Even members of the administration realize this is failing. From today's Washington Post:
“What we ended up with,” said one senior Obama administration official, who would not speak on the record because he was being critical of his own administration’s environmental bona fides, “is a program in which you trade in old clunkers for new clunkers.” Less discussed is the second critique of the program: It rewards drivers who chose to buy gas guzzlers a few years back, but not those who spent more to buy fuel-sippers.
I think that second point has been seriously understated. It's like rewarding a shoplifter with a $100 free shopping spree and hoping they stop stealing from you after that.
Now allow me to add another critique. I was speaking to a car dealer here in Rochester the other day (look, I use real sources too), and he brought up this point, which I hadn't though of before:
Assume that you are an individual living on low income, or even fixed income. There are certainly enough people like that in this country to consider them an important part of population. Now, you, as one of those people, would really love to get a new car, but even with the $4,500 rebate, you just can't scrape together enough money to afford a brand new car. So you will go out and try to find a reliable model with more than 100,000 miles on it that costs somewhere under two grand. According to this dealer I was speaking to, a pretty significant portion of the used car business is in these "heavily used but pretty cheap" cars.
Well, thanks to "Cash for Clunkers", much of the supply in that sector of the market has been destroyed. People that would normally trade their cars in years from now and buy a new one (allowing that old car to be sold off to someone with low or fixed income at a low price) are trading their cars in right now. The government mandates that all cars traded in through the program must be crushed, so they can't be resold. This means today's "clunkers" will not get the chance to be tomorrow's cheap bargains.
This will at least for a few years disproportionately hurt the poorest members of society, the ones who can't take advantage of the "Clunkers" program right now because it only covers new cars and won't be able to buy a old, cheap, crappy car in the future because there will be so few of them left.
So now the liberals have to choose: the environment or the poor people?
What you're left with a program that does not create new demand (it just shifts future demand forward), destroys the future of an important segment of the used car market, and rewards the people who have been causing the "problem" in the first place. All in the name of a tiny reduction in gasoline consumption, slightly better emission statistics, and a little bump in consumer confidence.
Like Third Eye Blind sings in their newest single: "half-measures are all half-assed" (funny, they wrote that as a critique of Bush....but it works for government in general)
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