The Paper Chase
There's a lot of concern about over the circulation dips in the newspaper industry. It's seen as a sign of the demise of print news. It's seen as a sign of America's disenchantment with the traditional or mainstream media – or whatever the bloggers are calling it this week.
But it turns out, interestingly enough, that some of the decline is on purpose.
Newspapers finally realized that the cost of keeping some borderline readers just wasn't worth the expense or the chase. It's like the girl in high school that you'd call and call and talk to and walk to class and hope that you'd get a date with but … Wait, I'm getting a tad autobiographical here. Where was I?
Right. Newspapers. Today's New York Times informs us that:
Driven by marketing and delivery costs and pressure from advertisers, many papers have decided certain readers are not worth the expense involved in finding, serving and keeping them.It makes sense, really. For years newspapers would do promotions and make a big push to scratch out every last possible subscriber and then point out the total number to advertisers. But the "occasional reader" turned out to be not worth the effort, since they weren't valued by advertisers. Why spend money to have somebody at a call-center give a mostly-disinterested consumer a special deal, only to have that person cancel at the end of the promotion. (And do advertisers want to target someone so capricious?)"It's a rational business decision of newspapers focusing on quality circulation rather than quantity, shedding the subscribers who cost more and generate less revenue," said Colby Atwood, president of Borrell Associates, a media research firm.
Newspaper circulation is an interesting little shell game, isn't it? You have a few newspaper willing to admit that it's not worth inflating their readership by hook or by crook, and then there are those that will carpet America's hotel hallways and call themselves Number One.
But the plus side for you, if you happen to be a newspaper subscriber, is that existing subscribers are so valued that it might be worth calling your local paper to see if they will give you a better deal in order to retain you.