The U.S. Has Lost More Than 166 Print Newspapers Since 2008

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Joe Pompeo
Troubling factoid of the day: A recent report by the World Association of Newspapers and Newspaper Publishers says that more than 166 U.S. newspapers have stopped putting out a print edition or closed down altogether since 2008, according to Paper Cuts, an interactive website that tracks newspaper layoffs and buyouts.

From the association's Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog:

More than 39 titles did so in 2008, and the number rose to 109 in 2009. So far in 2010, more than 18 papers have closed down or stopped publishing a print version.

According to Paper Cuts, there have been nearly 35,000 job losses or buyouts in the U.S. newspaper industry since March 2007. From March to December 2007, more than 2,256 newspaper jobs have been reportedly eliminated or offered buyouts.

The numbers increased to more than 15,992 in 2008 and were at more than 14,783 in 2009. As of May 2010, there have been more than 1,797 job losses or buyouts in newspaper companies in the country...

Paper Cuts' latest tally for 2010 layoffs and buyouts as of this posting was 1,887. The most recent ones happened at Illinois' Belleville News-Democrat (three) and Florida's La Palma (number unknown) on July 3; and The Houston Chronicle (eight) and The Tribune of Ames, Iowa (18) on June 24.

Rupert Murdoch Declares War on Free Internet

Image via CrunchBase

Michael Wolff
It hasn’t been a good year for Murdoch—the largest publisher of newspapers in the worst year in newspaper history. His purchase of The Wall Street Journal is widely seen as one of the worst moves of his career—News Corp. has already taken a $3 billion write-down on the purchase. His beloved New York Post, always a money loser for him, is now suffering such great losses that Murdoch is considering a partnership with or even sale to the Daily News, the Post’s arch-enemy. His once highly profitable newspaper groups in the U.K. and Australia are faltering. News Corp.’s share price has been among the hardest hit of any major media company.

And yet, Murdoch, at 78, would double-down in a heartbeat: he strategizes constantly about how he might buy The New York Times. But first he might have to save the newspaper business itself. As it happens, he, unlike almost everyone else in the business, believes newspapers are suffering not at the hands of technological forces beyond their control but at the hands of proprietors who are weaker than he is.

After fulminating for a year about how people on the Internet should pay for news, he made it official. Announcing in August the biggest losses his company has ever sustained, he added that he’d had enough and if people wanted to read his newspapers they could bloody well pay for them.

I should say I am not a neutral party here. Two years ago, I helped found Newser, a news aggregator that summarizes the stories of other news providers, which, along with the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, and Google News, has become a focus of the print world’s antipathy. (When I tried to explain Newser to Murdoch, he said, “So you steal from me.”)
Read More...