Here’s that link I mentioned to a paper presented at a conference last week at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
To add some facts to the comments: Newspaper circulation has been declining yearly for several decades. What’s causing the financial trauma isn’t circulation, though of course rising circulation is better than declining. Some of the circulation declines at many papers, such as the Observer, come from their choosing to eliminate delivery by truck and carrier to distant places, including Raleigh. But subscription revenue is a small percentage of newspaper revenue. That’s why papers conclude it’s more cost-effective not to deliver to far-away places.
The overwhelming bulk of revenue is from advertising. In the past, at most papers around the country up to 30 percent of that revenue, or more, has been from classified ads. That’s why the migration of classified ad revenue to online has been such a blow.
Last year, U.S. newspapers averaged a 17 percent profit margin. The Observer remains quite profitable. Last year, nationally, only about 11 percent of newspapers’ ad revenue came from online ads. Online readership is growing, and online ad revenue is growing.