The Political Backstory: More Trauma in Traditional Media, this time, Newspapers

I know we are putting out all political news all the time, but it bears pointing out another striking story this week on the trauma of traditional media, the bread and butter of politics of the past. I commented last week on the severe trauma in broadcast television companies, particularly NBC. But this week the news was just as severe, if not more so, for traditional newspapers.

The New York Times had a very good overarching story on how ALL major newspapers in the country (save three strange exceptions) significantly lost circulation in the last six months, in what is proving to be an inexorable slide. Even in the best papers:

The Los Angeles Times lost 8 percent of its daily circulation and 6 percent on Sunday. The Boston Globe, owned by The New York Times Company, lost 6.7 percent of its daily circulation and almost 10 percent on Sunday.”

As we have pointed out repeatedly at the New Politics Institute, you can track this decline right alongside the appearance of personal computers and the growth in the internet. In fact, the Times points out that the peak of daily newspaper circulation came in 1984, which happens to be the year the IBM PC made its appearance. Since then, newspaper have lost 20 million subscriptions, a full one-third of the peak. From the NYT:

“Circulation for about half the nation's dailies had dropped to 43.7 million, down 2.8 percent, for the six months ending in September, compared with the same period last year. Daily circulation for all of the nation's papers reached its peak in 1984, at 63.3 million.”

The good news is that those papers that are shifting their strategy around the internet are seeing substantial success, though not enough yet to make up for the broadsheet revenue losses. However, you can see the seeds of a rebirth:

“The newspaper association said that for the third quarter of this year, 57 million people visited a newspaper Web site, an increase of 24 percent over the period a year ago. And revenues from online advertisers are growing.”

Politics has been conducted for the 20th century on the backs of two major media: newspapers and broadcast television. The 21st century will be very different. We are seeing irrefutable signs of it all around us.

Peter Leyden