Newspapers–A Dying Institution

Much has been said recently about the death of newspapers. TechCrunch recently posted the circulation numbers for the top 25 daily U.S. newspapers.

The prognosis? Not good for American newspapers. For the major newspapers, all but the Wall Street Journal showed fairly significant decline in daily circulation (March-September 2009)–the San Francisco Chronicle which I follow online dropped almost 26%. The papers that showed gains were mostly what I’d call “local” papers–papers serving specific communities.

Here are some of the comments to the TechCrunch post that I think are interesting:

Unlike all the other papers, the WSJ actually “prepares” you for the day’s events, versus reporting day-old news.

— Andre Garrigo-Bared – October 26th, 2009 at 6:28 pm CDT

I still say that newspapers need to use the online world as a knowledge archive and use newspapers as a way of sorting it all out. The Wall Street Journal seems to actually do some of that.

— Phil (@begrown_besexy) – October 26th, 2009 at 7:48 pm CDT

Might be helpful to put the web numbers up with the paper circulation numbers. See how well these brands are keeping an audience as they kill fewer trees.

— Scott Yates (@scodtt) – October 26th, 2009 at 7:14 pm CDT

Somewhat ironic because WSJ is the only one of these doesn’t have an open door to free content. Yes, you can find it through Digg and Google news and other places. But you can’t go to wsj.com and read all the content for free. Unless you’re prepared to do some major surfing, you have to buy the newspaper to get most of the content in one place (or pay for wsj.com)

— johnny giggles – October 26th, 2009 at 8:32 pm CDT

Source: Siegler, MG. (2009, October 26). “What’s Black And White And Red All Over? Top Newspaper Circulation Numbers“. Retrieved on October 26, 2009 from TechCrunch Website: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/26/whats-black-and-white-and-red-all-over-top-newspaper-circulation-numbers/

As an aside, I found it very interesting to look at the worldwide circulation of newspapers. It really surprised me to see Japanese papers occupying the top 5 spots on the list. (Ok this post was as much about linking that tidbit of information as the death of the newspaper! :) )

I’ve been wondering recently when will universities join this dead pool / death watch of outdated institutions…

I think we better start figuring it out–and certainly much faster than we currently are…

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