For some journalists, it's akin to Chicken Little declaring, "The sky is falling. The sky is falling." Not only is the French newspaper Le Monde,welcoming bloggers ---they are giving them equal billing as professional journalists.
Mon Dieu.
From Loic Le Meur blog,
Le Monde is one of the first newspaper in the World to offer blogs to their readers, under the Le Monde brand. They have also published a ranking of the 10 top blogs, mixing their journalists blogs and their readers blogs, showing them at the same level, based on blog readers recommendations.
The Le Monde blogging policy comes at a time when American newspapers are continuing the slippery slope into circulation oblivion. A slip, that Jennifer Saba reports in Editor &Publisher ,the financial experts expected.
"Circulation declined as expected," wrote John Janedis, senior analyst with Wachovia Equity Research, in a note. He, like others, points to the effects of the Internet that is giving print circulation a whipping.
"We expect the companies in our coverage universe to continue to improve their online presence, using both their own Web sites, as well as to purchase other online assets, to help combat the continued decline in circ trends," Janedis wrote.
Bear Stearns analyst Alexia Quadrani doesn't even think yesterday's bad news -- daily circulation plunged 2.8% and Sunday fell 3.4%, one of, if not the worst drop in recent years -- will do much to shake The Street's confidence. Or lack thereof.
"Overall we believe these results are in line with expectations of low to mid single-digit average declines and therefore do not expect a material impact [on] the publishing stocks," Quadrani wrote in a note. For that, she's waiting for October advertising results.
The folks at Freakonomics have different take on the situation.They say the circulation drops are intentional
Not everyone is convinced that newspapers are dying, of course. Jack Welch wants to buy the Boston Globe; Dow Jones just managed to find a buyer who paid $282 million for six smaller newspapers; and of course several months ago, McClatchy bought Knight-Ridder. Circulation declines notwithstanding, these transactions suggest an underlying value that the newspapers’ own articles do not reflect.
The media executive Allan D. Mutter makes a very interesting point on his blog about circulation declines: a lot of them are essentially intentional. That is, circulation figures are falling in part because many newspapers—in response, I am guessing, to recent audit scandals at Newsday
and elsewhere—have stopped distributing free or cheap copies of their papers, which used to be helpful in padding circulation figures.
But, as Music City Mafia pointed out,
Circulation is the least of the newspaper’s worries. Advertisers are heading for the exits in droves. Car dealers have traditionally spent more money in the local paper than all other media combined. And that has held steady for decades. But newspapers share of dealer’s budgets (according tot the N.A.D.A) has deopped from 51% to 36% in the last two years. I assumer that similar numbers exist for your favorites: Real Estate Agents
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