Venerable newspaper The New York Times is considering charging readers for access to its website, less than two years after discontinuing an earlier Times Select online-subscription service. In an online question-and-answer session, Bill Keller, the Times’ executive editor, discussed how the newspaper has been debating whether to charge for online access to the newspaper’s content: […]

On its “Traditional Media” blog today, search engine giant Google said it was “turning the page” on its print media advertising sales program, which will end Feb. 28. Google had been working with 800 U.S. newspapers, up from about 50 papers at the time of its late-2006 launch. Spencer Spinnell, Director of Google Print Ads […]

The Cleveland Leader, a competitor of grand old newspaper stalwart, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, reports that the Plain Dealer is considering renting out downtown office and parking space — space no longer needed due to “staff reductions.” The Leader claims that Plain Dealer employees received a memo Monday about leasing space in its newly-constructed building […]

In what the newspaper deems a “groundbreaking” move, the Detroit Free Press and News announced that they are cutting home delivery to three days per week. The Free Press and The Detroit News are the first first “big city papers” to make the shift from mostly-paper to mostly-online news publishing, citing a steep decline in […]

Chicago-based Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today.

The publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and Los Angeles Times cited a $13 billion debt load and a “perfect storm” of declining advertising revenue in a worsening economy, which led to today’s filing.

The company hopes to keep its newspapers and television and radio stations in operation while restructuring goes on.

Who’s next?

High-level talks are happening this week in Washington, D.C. this week between Big Business and government officials, focused on an emergency government bailout of the foundering financial and automotive industries. The thinking is that saving Wall Street and Detroit from further disaster will have some kind of ripple (trickle-down?) effect and buoy prospects for smaller […]

Newspapers sales are plummeting and, along with them, newspaper revenues. Total newspaper advertising revenues fell by $3 billion in the first six months of this year to $18.8 billion, the lowest level in a dozen years, according to data from the Newspaper Association of America. While the decline of print sales is on ongoing trend […]

We’ve reported previously that newspapers are losing advertisers to Internet media, that young people are abandoning newspapers for Internet media and that newspaper revenue is tanking. The result of these trends is that the value of traditional newspapers is in a freefall: Avista, the PE-fund that bought the Minneapolis Star-Tribune for $530 million in late […]

Newspaper print advertising sales have fallen to their lowest level in a decade, according to statistics from the Newspaper Association of America. Print revenues in the first six months of this year totaled $20.3 billion, the lowest since the $19.7 billion in sales recorded in the first half of 1997. Print ad sales in the […]