And Nero fiddled while Rome burned... no?

Nope, I'm not going to take time here to acknowledge that I've not been writing much lately.  That's a fact in evidence and it's not worth wasting space on.  I've said before that I'll write when I have something worth writing about, otherwise, well, it doesn't make sense to force an article just to see something new here that isn't new at all.

What I'm here to write about today is the newspaper business and the cries that a lot of newspaper publishers have been making about how they're not sure they can save their businesses as they are being squeezed on both ends, lower subscription numbers (meaning fewer confirmed readers) and lower revenue from advertising sales.

I'm guessing that some basics of the business have escaped a few of the publishers out there as a big part of the reason for lower advertising revenue is the fact that the subscription/circulation numbers have continued to decrease and of course the advertisers are refusing to pay the rates they used when they know that the number of people that are {potentially} reading and seeing their advertising is a number that keeps getting smaller and smaller.  It's a bit of a vicious circle as the lower advertising revenue leaves the newspaper with less revenue to spend to pay their employees to produce content (or to print the papers, etc.) which winds up leaving the papers to get smaller and smaller *or* the other alternative is to raise revenue by raising the price of the product.

As with all things business, I'm sure that the number crunchers with the spreadsheets and prediction models look at the potential number of lost subscribers that may come from an increase in the cover price/subscription price of the product and they carefully balance those numbers against the revenue that they are able to keep/raise by implementing the increase in price and decide whether or not to raise the price or not.  What those models ignore is what the real, rather than modelled and predicted, customers wind up doing.  Customers like me, that see the increased subscription fees and decide that the paper just isn't worth that much, especially as the content gets downsized while the price is increased.

The Washington Post is a fine example of this situation, though I can also point to the Washington Times and U.S.A. Today, all of which have raised their prices to levels that leave me sitting on the sidelines rather than bothering to pay for a subcription or even a daily copy price.  Rather than paying 50% more for the product, or 100% more for it than I used to, I ignore the printed product and catch the news I want on the TV, Radio or online.

I could be sitting down with a printed paper, enjoying it while I eat my breakfast/ lunch/ or dinner, and relaxing a bit.  I know the news there is a little aged when it is printed, but it's nice and convenient to flip through and read and gives me something to focus on rather than being something that I quickly browse past and then forget soon after.

As it turns out, I recently resubscribed to the Washington Times as I got a checkout coupon in the grocery store that was good for a 75% discount on the subscription price/daily copy price.  With the price that low I'm more than happy to subscribe and the publishers can add me to the count of subscribers/daily circulation numbers to justify their advertising prices because, well, I'm gonna be seeing those printed ads when I'm reading through the paper.  If the price were always that low, they could fairly easily catch several more subscribers, especially considering just how much lower than they are than their main competitor (the Washington Post).  The difference in price is truly staggering, with the price I just paid for a year of the Times in the 10's of dollars while the price for a years subscription to the Washington Post would be well over $100 even at the best discounts I've seen offered for same.  Heck, Sunday only subscriptions to the Post are nearly that high.

Liberal types would perhaps argue that the Times is biased and slanted too conservatively, or laugh at the fact that the Rev. Moon has some association with the paper (founder).  Both are true, and yet if you check the news stories you'd likely find that the Times is, to borrow FOX News' slogan, fair and balanced, and even Stevie Wonder should be able to see that the Post is slanted just as badly to the liberal side, if not more so.  Is it worth paying that much more to subscribe to the Post for the same news (and in many cases, for not even the same amount of news as the Post has really cut back on the amount of news that they do print...)?  I personally don't think so, but...  were the Post to perhaps try cutting back a lot more on their daily copy prices and especially on their home subscription prices, I might, just might, be able to justify paying something in the order of $100 for a year's subscription so that I could read the sports news and see the the advertising in that section of the paper.  I might then venture into the Business section of the paper and see ads there, or into the world news section, etc.  Except...  well, except, read on for another paragraph or so here...

The exception is that the Post has self destructed so badly with their increased prices and cuts in the amount and quality of their reporting that the writers I used to pay for the papers to read aren't there, or at least aren't there regularly enough to pay for copies of the paper for, and whole sections of the paper (Business section as an example...) are, for all intents and purposes, gone now.  Without offering a lot more reason to buy the product, I just don't see the sense in doing so.

I realize the good old days and golden age of newspapers is gone, but I personally think a lot of the reason that the newspaper business is in such dire straights is because the publishers did it to themselves.  The Radio business and even the TV business has somewhat headed down the same paths, but not to the level that can so easily be seen in the newspaper biz.