Newspapers continuing decline

by: Hopeful

Mon May 18, 2009 at 03:01:33 PM EDT

He said the site presently makes "a lot, a lot of money" from digital advertising-though he wouldn't specify how much-and that executives at the paper believe it is "substantially more" than The Wall Street Journal currently makes on a subscription-based pay model.

Obviously that's why the previous NYT effort failed, they make more without charging readers. Sadly, that is still not anywhere near as much as they used to make from print advertising.  Here's the latest from the Wall Street Journal on our Star-Ledger:

Sunday circulation, often seen as the best indicator of a newspaper's health, fell faster than it did during the week. The Houston Chronicle's Sunday circulation declined 15.7%, followed by the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., and the Philadelphia Inquirer, where Sunday circulation declined 14.7% and 13.8%, respectively.

The article also notes weekday declines for the New York Times, New York Daily News, and the New York Post.

On the other hand, Editor and Publisher says nj.com (i.e., the Star-Ledger) has an online increase of 106% from last year.  It had a unique audience of 2.6 million in April.  That's pretty good news.

I actually think atrios is right that an alliance with local TV may be the future. The problem is that that solution doesn't work for New Jersey because we don't have our own TV stations and the Philly/New York stations are horrible at covering New Jersey.