Posted on 07/19/2006 2:40:14 PM PDT by Sergeant Tim
Thomas Lifson made some interesting comments this morning, on RealClearPolitics.com:
"...The print edition of the New York Times in its local metropolitan market is in serious decline. Management won't openly admit it in so many words, but circulation is declining and its advertising sales force is facing more competition from new media, while traditional advertisers like department stores decline. The future is bleak, so it is time to get their money out of a loser.
"Jacks Risko and I noted 5 months ago that, "The Times has seen its comparable core metropolitan circulation decline by 27% since 1993 (the first year that such figures were available online), when it had a circulation of 758,000. Its current 556,000 circulation places it a dismal number three in its home market behind the New York Daily News (689,000) and the New York Post (663,000)."
"The metropolitan physical print edition of the New York Times is still the most profitable part of its business, but it is now officially what consultants call a cash-cow. The company is pulling cash out of the business, cutting expenses, and raising prices. Margins and profits can be good for awhile as cash is pulled out, but a rapidly diminishing resource is being exploited."
Are we seeing the rats aboard the SS Old Grey Lady preparing for a swim? Perhaps it is time to pass out the life preservers and to abandon ship.
Nothing that a barge full of concrete blocks (or Big Dig ceiling tiles) couldn't fix.
Thanks for the ping.
Gee, do you think it might help if Pinch agreed to cover the news the way his old man did - mostly, right down the middle?
Wouldn't you think the stockholders would demand a better performance?
NYT was trading at $32/shr. last year. $22/shr today!
$12 by November? (W's approval in the mid 40's)
"When your enemy is drowning stick a garden hose in his mouth." Ray Kroc.
Last Trade: 22.22
52wk Range: 22.27 - 35.00
That's almost a 37 percent drop in the stock price over the past year. Just damn.
This was the article Rush mentioned on his show yesterday. Thx for posting...
Wow, I never knew that. I thought both the Daily News and the Post were a distant second and third to the NYT.
I think Helen Thomas has worn out her welcome and soon will need a place to hang out. Bill Keller can serve her tea with her medication.
Rearranging-the-deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic bump.
The fact of the matter is, the pool of money that exists to support leftist causes is not a bottom-less pitt. There is only so much to go around. That's why I don't get too worked up over the leftist money going to Move-Ons, or Err Amerika, or whatever, because in the old days that money would have gone to prop up traditional leftist institutions like the NYT.
The good news is that in the old days they only had to prop up a few institutions and keep them insulated against market forces. Now days there are so many holes to plug that is spreading the availabe pie too thin to insulate any of them, so all of them are exposed to market forces. So you have Err Amerika that can't get ratings and getting taken off stations, CNN and MSNBC that nobody watches and the NYT and LAT losing readership by the bushel.
Hi, wanted to wish you a belated welcome to FR : )
It's great when some liberal rag goes too far even for the liberals. NYT has gone too far on more than one occasion. Thanks for posting this...
His comment does reinforce what I've known about newspapers for years. They don't consider the printers, support staff, or delivery personnel as people. There hasn't been a lot of publicity about it, but this sounds like a major cutback, and I'm betting the Times is hemorrhaging a lot more money than they're letting on.
Darn it!..I have a cabin up in Maine with outdoor facilities. I will really miss the Times. Now I'll have to shell out some money for Charmin.
When Limbaugh first went on the air in Austin, Texas, the Lost in America Spaceman (city newspaper) ran articles claiming he'd never survive in a politically astute city like Austin. Course, they also predicted that Bush wouldn't beat Ann Richards in the Governor's race.
The Times has been able to create the impression that it's more widely read than it is, because it's the newspaper that until recently it was read by all the other newspaper columnists, and the network big shots. That gave it a particularly loud megaphone, because what was written in the opinion pages of the NYT was on the opinion pages of all the clone local writers the next week.
I don't think it's that widely read even by them anymore for several reasons. The biggest is that the literacy rate of newspaper opinion writers has dropped in the last few years. Mike Royko used to be able to pound out columns on a typewriter and have no misspellings or grammatical errors. Today, they're very common, even with automatic spelling and grammar checkers. I don't think many of the columnists today have the capacity to read an opinion piece more than three or four paragraphs.
I am so proud to have dumped my subscription shortly after 9/11.
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