After years of bad headlines the industry finally has some good news
IN A recent issue of the beloved comic book, Superman’s alter ego, Clark
Kent, quits his job as a journalist at the Daily Planet
because the paper has gutted its news coverage. Is the outlook for newspapers
really so dire that even superheroes have given up on them? Ever since 2006,
when The Economist asked on its cover who had “killed the
newspaper”, the industry’s pains have only intensified. Advertising has plunged.
Readers have kept moving online. Revenues of newspapers continued to fall,
dropping to $34 billion last year in America—only about half of what they were
in 2000.
Yet things have started to look a bit less grim, particularly in America.
Revenues from advertising are still falling, but those from circulation have at
last started to stabilise. At some papers, such as the New York
Times, circulation revenues this year are forecast to offset the decline in
advertising for the first time in at least five years.
