“A good friend of mine emailed me the other day and said the New Orleans Times-Picayune is stopping delivery in Baton Rouge. They’ve not announced it publicly, but I’ll watch for the article when it comes out.”
A friend, who opted out of the fishwrap scams, decades ago, said that advertisers were really looking at the real stats re subscriptions and news racks sells, like where are those subscriptions and news racks.
She noted that if your business was in San Francisco and a little in the north Bay area, paying $’s for total circulation sales with ads going to Ukiah, Willets, Eureka and Crescent subscriptions/news rack sales didn’t help your local business.
So this was a little dirty secret the Fishwraps around America had. So they subsidized the costs of shipping the fishwraps in some cases hundreds of miles to get their circulation and news rack sales up or just to maintain them.
Enter the rising gasoline/diesel prices the past 3-4 years until the recent downturn. Their long range deliveries became another daily/weekly/monthly/yearly cost drag. So those subsidized deliveries are being cancelled across the country.
The internet of course has minimalized any real need for a newspaper printed hundreds of miles away and delivered hours if not a day later with the end consumer.
Lee Enterprises is owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
http://www.fitzandjen.com/2008/12/no-champagne-in-davenport-as-lee-swings-to-879-million-08-loss-on-billionplus-goodwill-writeoff.html
No Champagne In Davenport As Lee Swings To $879 Million ’08 Loss On Billion-Plus Goodwill Write-Off