The average age of newspaper readers is now 55.
UPDATE: Ed Driscoll has more about media gerontology. [You see, newspapers... television... they're a boomer thing.-ed. Stop getting personal. How old are you?]
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Shrinking but still an extraordinary cash cow– one of the best businesses in America (no wonder Warren Buffett always loved the newspaper biz). From the article:
In 2004, the average after-tax profit margin of the newspaper divisions of the major media companies that Morton follows was 20.5 percent. That is more than double the average profit margin of the Fortune 500.
McClatchy Newspapers, which owns the Star Tribune, had a profit margin of 23.1 percent, according to Morton; Knight Ridder newspapers, including the Pioneer Press, had a profit margin of 19.4 percent.
Obviously, rising profitability in a time of declining readership and audit scandals is related to the fact that most newspapers today enjoy monoply status. Gee, what an achievement.
Another factor is fat ad rates on the back of the extreme amateurishness, even gullibility, of marketing staffs at the small local vendors, such as auto dealers and furniture and other retailers, who overpay for newspaper inserts instead of developing sophisticated pay-for-performance internet-based advertising campaigns.
Also note the dependence of newspapers’ revenue stream on the monopoly power of their realtor advertisers, whose newspaper and other ad spend would dry up if they no longer monopolized MLS data and therefore faced real competition from low-commission (or no-commission) intermediaries.
A sh*tty product backed up by monopoly power and one of the most corrupt and powerful political lobbies in the country. Let’s hope this business goes the way of the snake oil vendor business.
If you want to kill the MSM’s newspaper biz, then cut into their ad rates. We all know that their subscriber #s are bogus, and reflect millions of people who are receiving free copies of the LAT etc with no thought of ever paying for a copy, let alone subscribing for any length of time. Not to mention failing to reflect churn.
So obviously, the lifeline of the newspapers is advertising. Peel off the car dealers, furniture retailers and realtors and you’ll run the newspapers into the ground in no time flat.
At last – a group where I’m still younger than the average age!
Yeah, and here’s the problem with cutting the rates of local advertisers….. you monopolize the business even more. Smaller local competitors or smaller regional newspaper conglomerates (oxymoron I know but oppoosed to the huge congloms) are going to be eaten up by the bigger guys is all you are going to accomplish.
Plus, which local auto dealer is going to advertise on the internet? Is there a local internet group? doubtful if ever…. that is the advantage of the internet it links people from all over the world… however, a guy from australia or ny is going to buy a car from an auto dealer in LA advertised on Jamis Media or Roger’s site.
The newspapers still serve a purpose. If I want local news and good gossip and sports section I’m still buying the NY Post…. and while eat lunch or dinner at a restaurant or diner while I eat and relax in peace, there is nothing I’d rather do than browse through the local paper and the Post. And I’m someone who read weblogs etc….
Also, I was under the impression that the NY Post lost money for years and years… I don’t know if it now is a money maker but it almost shut down several times in the past. The Daily News (NY) is like a sordove clone or similar paper.
I would like to know how those numbers compare for the NY Times, Wall Street Jouranl and NY Post and Daily News… I’d bet the Post has the youngest due to its style, easier to read, sports section and news on hollywood etc…
Plus, it has a conservative relatively OpEd section which I like… though I don’t read many OpEds anymore to be honest… that’s what I have the Internet for.
Also the Post has Uri Dan’s regular updates from the Middle East and in general usually 1 or 2 good articles on the Middle East.
Mike
I know my grammar was off in a few places… good night.. but you get my otherwise well thought out “brilliant” points.
Mike – Craigslist.org is destroying the classified ad base of the newspapers, so yes, it is possible for local internet content to thrive and displace the newspapers.
I agree that PJM has an uphill battle ahead of it. The name of the game is local news, not international or even national news. That’s the $50B+ opportunity.
That is a surprising, even shocking, figure. Does anybody know what the numbers were five and ten years ago? That would give us an idea of whether this reflects the Internet age and increasing distrust of ‘dead tree journalism’ or simply demographic trends. For that matter, what is the average age of literate Americans, so we have a number to compare it to?
Meanwhile, here’s the news out of Syria:
Syrian Interior Minister Commits Suicide”
Things get stranger and stranger over there.
Lola – from your linked article: “Syrian officials have said in recent weeks the U.N. report would show Damascus had nothing to do with the killing.”
Sounded like a prediction, but now sounds more like a directive, no?
Mikem,
I’m too lazy to go look up the demographic info but the links Roger gave us identify the median age of newspaper readers as 55 and the network news audience as 60. Those are surely well above the national medians even if we discount those too young to read or stay awake to see network newscasts
The trends seem to be solidly away from the news portions of the MSM (newspapers and network newscasts). Readership and viewership have been dropping for a good long while and the median ages have been climbing.
What causes this? As with most things we may guess that there are several factors at work. One may be declinging credibility of these MSM organs. Another may well be that the younger portion of the prospective audience is accustomed to seeking information through other sources. Yet another may be declining interest in “news” in general among younger people. It would be interesting to have some idea of the magnitude of each of these, and other, factors.
As others have pointed out the sheer size of the audience doesn’t matter much if these mediums continue to produce profitable revenue. A declining and aging audience would suggest, however, that the social influence of these mediums would also decline.
Adapt the old adage, “Get them by the short hairs and their hearts will follow” to “Get them by the eyeballs and their minds will follow.” Fewer eyeballs, fewer minds. And despite the generally aging of our citizenry we have not yet reached the point where the over-65 crowd maintains high levels of influence. That said, it is entirely possible that the 50-65 crowd is extremely influential.
Mikem wrote:
I don’t have demographics, but I do have an interesting Thomas Sowell quote from last year:
Indeed. (As a well-known figure in the successor medium is apt to say…)
One of the key issues facing newspapers involves classified ads. These are important to papers for 2 reasons: as a direct revenue source and as a motivation for people to buy & read the paper.
I don’t agree that the Internet is no threat to local advertising: websites for car buyers, for example, let you search within a given radius of your home. Plus, you can get much better pictures than with a standard classified ad.
The main thing keeping papers going, IMNSHO, is portability…it’s easier to carry than a laptop, can be folded, can be read in bright sunlight, etc.
E-ink / electronic paper technology is emerging rapidly, and it will negate most if not all of these advantages of the traditional print newspaper.
I give it 2-4 years till this technology is packaged up properly and available to consumers at low cost. The newspapers better figure out how to take advantage of it: it’s their last chance.
As someone who subscribed to newspapers from high school on until about 10 years ago, hard copy means nothing. I still read newspapers; I’m just no longer an ink-stained wretch from the process.
The big advantage of a newspaper is portability, but that only helps in cities like New York or San Francisco, where most people commute via mass transit and thus are looking for something to read. I commute to my office by car and thus I get my news while commuting from Laura Ingraham and Hugh Hewitt.
As a 53 year old who hasn’t bought a dead tree edition of any newspaper but the Wall Street Journal in a decade nor deliberately watched television news in even longer, this makes me feel young for my age.
I will admit to accessing individual online MSM news stories if a link (sometimes even via google news) catches my eye, but if registration is called for I promptly drift away.
Roger,I’m 55 and on lipitor.You’re frightening me.
To get to other topics.In the Moses Wine series,did you drive the type of car Moses did(or vivce versa)?.Because he had some pretty neat cars in the earlier books.
Roger,I’m 55 and on lipitor.You’re frightening me.
To get to other topics.In the Moses Wine series,did you drive the type of car Moses did(or vivce versa)?.Because he had some pretty neat cars in the earlier books.
Apropos Thibaud’s musings on how to “kill the MSM’s newspaper biz” — first, there has to be something to replace it with. And I don’t see how on earth PJMedia or any other internet based news dissemination service will be able to generate the revenue to employ the thousands upon thousands of journalists necessary to initially gather the news. I enjoy Roger’s site, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to give him a cent for his efforts. And if he tries to make me watch a commercial — CLICK and out. The blogospere expands the op-ed pages, most excellently. I don’t see how it can replace reporter’s shoe leather.
Markus,
Are you saying that we need to keep the MSM newsprint business alive as a jobs program for “journalists”? Corporations are always looking for people who can spin information to make it seem to support the corporate line. They’ll be fine – they just won’t be able to pretend to themselves that they’re slaving away to make a better world. They’ll have to get straight with the idea that they’ve got a job rather than a mission.
Knucklehead — I was making the point that gathering the news, as opposed to commenting on news that has already been gathered, is an expensive and labor-intensive operation. I don’t see how the blogosphere and other “new media” will be able to support such an effort.
Or are you implying that most journalism is nothing more than spin? If so, you’re deluded. Look at Roger’s site: most of his posts are commentary on a linked “MSM” article. Even the conservative blogosphere and the conservative political opinion journals DEPEND on the “MSM” for the hard reporting.