Print Media Deathwatch: The Newspaper Association of America has released its latest numbers on Web traffic to newspaper sites, and while the numbers sound impressive, they reveal a fundamental challenge facing the industry – getting your attention. Highlights of the NAA’s stats: The total U.S. unique Internet audience: 195,974,309. Of these, 70,340,277 or 35.89 percent […]

If the first quarter of this year is any indication, 2009 may turn out to be the worst year ever for the newspaper industry. According to figures from the Newspaper Association of America, newspaper revenues nosedived 28.3 percent in the first quarter – a $2.6 billion dollar drop from last year. Newspaper revenues plummeted across […]

Wednesday online book retailing giant Amazon.com unveiled the newest version of the Kindle e-book reader. The new model, the Kindle DX, is a bigger-screened, more expensive version ($489!) of Amazon’s popular gadget. The DX is thin and light, can display more shades of gray (perfect for b/w newspaper and magazine content), and, says InformationWeek, it […]

Gannettblog, “the alarmingly independent daily” blog covering the large national newspaper-publishing company, Gannett Co., posted a purported “internal memo” from an editor which bans staff from the use of social networking sites during work hours: “April 21, 2009 Staff: It has come to my attention that some staff members are spending a lot of time […]

The New York Times today suggests that newspaper ad revenue is going to decline 30% in 2009 – worse than the most pessimistic of industry predictions: One of the few publishers to make a public statement is the Gannett Company, owner of the largest and most profitable newspaper chain in the country. At a conference […]

Leaders from the 13 unions representing Boston Globe employees say that parent company New York Times Co. is demanding they agree to $20 million in concessions within thirty days — “or else the paper will be shuttered,” according to union officials who met with parent company management. NYTimes Co. executives met Friday with union leaders […]

New research from Gartner helps explain why newspapers aren’t just failing in print, but online, too: Newspapers publishers are failing to take advantage of social media and the loyalty of their online readers. Gartner found that newspapers are not helping their readers to use social media to act as influencers. The problem starts with a […]

In four Michigan cities, the daily newspaper is becoming little more than a nostalgic memory.  The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times, will now come out only three days per week: Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Even more drastic changes are coming for the 174 year-old Ann Arbor News. The entire paper […]

In a bid to stay afloat in an industry in crisis, magazine and newspaper publishing giant Hearst Corp. is getting set to launch an “electronic reader” later this year, a device designed with periodical-reading in mind. Hearst publishes a number of titles, including magazines Seventeen, Cosmopolitan and Esquire, and newspaper The San Francisco Chronicle. Fortune […]

Time magazine co-founder Henry Luce considered news publications that relied on ad revenue as “morally abhorrent”. If a publication was dependent on advertisers to survive, it could not cover news, independent of its advertisers.

As people move their attention online, fewer and fewer people are paying for newspapers and news magazines and more and more news publications are relying on ads for their revenue.

Can ad supported news sites cover news as effectively and independently as traditional news sources – or is the future of news doomed to be “morally abhorrent?