One of the main concerns that many consumers have about the journalism industry is that print journalism is on the way out. Newspapers and magazines are a thing of the past, everything is going digital. The New York Times, which is a constant in the print journalism world, recently erected a paywall for their website. The Times
recently released they have 100,000 new subscribers since they installed this new policy, which brings in an estimated $26 million in revenue. Evercore Partners analyst Doug Arthur
said about the new subscribers, "It's an excellent figure...I (was) only looking for 200,000 subscribers in year one." An estimated $13 million is being spent to promote the new online subscriptions.
The downside of the policy is that there has been a 15 percent drop in the overall traffic of the site because of the article limitations, which was expected. The new subscribers are coming at a good time for The Times, their print advertising revenue is on the decline. Their revenue declined 4.4 percent on a 7.5 percent drop in print ad revenue, even though their digital ad revenue rose 4.5 percent during the first quarter. Their net income fell 57.6 percent to 5.4 million (4 cents per share) from 12.8 million (8 cents per share) a year ago.
Other newspapers have also reported disappointing quarter results such as Gannett and Media General. Other newspapers who have had success with charging for online access have been few, such as the News Corp's Wall Street Journal and Pearson Plc's Financial Times.
In this constant digital evolution, will there be room for print papers, even The New York Times? Some have a more positive outlook than others. The Onion, trying to find humor in the decline, released an article, "Why Did No One Inform Us Of the Imminent Death of the American Newspaper Industry?" You can read it
here.
What do you think? Do you think the imminent death of the newspaper industry is inevitable or do you think consumers will never get enough of their print newspapers?
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