Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

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Like you, I blame the Aspers

by Paul Wells on Monday, April 27, 2009 6:35pm - 16 Comments

Newspaper circulation in the U.S. continues to collapse. “Now at a record rate.” Kind of a good news/ bad news day for Rupert Murdoch: His Wall Street Journal is the only top-25 paper to gain even a sliver of circulation over last year; but his New York Post loses one-fifth of its circulation in a single year.

Tags: newspapers, Rupert Murdoch, trouble

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http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

The top 25 list surprised me, I had no idea WSJ has twice the circulation of NY Times. Too bad WSJ is not as influential with msm as NY Times is. And I wonder if WSJ did anything specific to increase sales.

Sean Stokholm

I wonder how much of the reported circulation is paid for – it might not all be sales.

Sisyphus

Again, David Olive ……

http://thestar.blogs.com/recession/2009/04/news-thats-not-fit-to-pay-for.html

And, jwl, there’s been this little tumult on and around Wall St. recently. For some reason that escapes me , maybe some people might think that the WSJ might have reliable information on that.

Canuckistanian

“maybe some people might think that the WSJ might have reliable information on that.”

possible. nevertheless, they would be wrong.

Critical Reasoning

It’s pointless to try to reason with all the shrill CanWest vultures.

Meanwhile, is there any chance the US newspaper industry could be rescued (or at least put on life support) by a federal bailout?

TJ Cook

You mean like the automakers? I assume you support that bailout too…

Sean Stokholm

Reporters need it more…

Critical Reasoning

LOL. I love it. Also, I didn’t know we could embed video! How do you do it?

Sean Stokholm

I just pasted in the usual link from Youtube. Maybe they think I’m actually Lord Black of Crosspuddle and gave me the executive keys to the blog.
Critical Reasoning

Testing:

Paul Wells

The Wall Street Journal has undergone a radical overhaul in its news choices and presentation in the past 18 months. Measurably less emphasis on business news; far more coverage of politics and foreign news. The resulting paper is far more appealing to a guy like me, who never understood money, but I wondered whether they were jeopardizing their core business audience. They seem to have broken even, which counts as a gain in this environment.

Conan the Agrarian

As a biographer, you may find Michael Wolff’s “The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the secret world of Rupert Murdoch” interesting. It treats Murdoch’s acquisition of the WSJ as its narrative core and the acme of Murdoch’s career.
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

That’s interesting about the changes, Paul. I have been reading Opinion Journal and Best Of The Web for years but not the regular paper because I ,too, wasn’t interested in so many business articles. I guess the changes to make it a more regular newspaper passed me by because I was unaware there was a difference.

Dot

Like you, I also don’t blame Edgar Bronfman Jr. – same late 90′s strategy it seems to me, based on “convergence” of content and dist’n .

Remember Stephen Case? Didn’t think so.
glen

My reading about the collapse of print journalism has been tempered in the last week or so by the analysis offered by Linda McQuaig. She points out that if newspapers really wanted to sell papers they would report actual news and not just the sacred stories that support a corporate agenda.
She provides some compelling examples.
http://www.mogulus.com/rabbletv/ondemand/pla_6588897959045946163?initthumburl=http://mogulus-user-files.s3.amazonaws.com/chv2rabbletv/2009/04/17/74ff993b-3f2e-492d-ae24-448e1f8743eb_610.jpg&playeraspectwidth=4&playeraspectheight=3