E-Media Tidbits

The big news in the newspaper industry this week is the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations report, which shows significant declines in print circulation at U.S. newspapers -- a 1.9-percent drop in daily circulation, and a 2.5 percent decline on Sunday. Major metro papers -- except for those growing a national audience -- are among the hardest hit. This represents the largest circulation losses in more than a decade, and indicates an acceleration of a 20-year downward trend. (Here's the New York Times' report.)

The conventional wisdom is that this is bad news for the industry. Well, since I'm an online guy and long ago left my print-journalism roots, I look at this as a positive thing. You see, I've been in the online-news field for over a decade, and I've seen this sector of journalism long under-funded in relation to its strategic importance to the future of media.

With Philip Meyer's apocalyptic vision of the newspaper industry's decline perhaps coming true, maybe these numbers will force some boardroom decision-making that puts more money into interactive/advanced media. That can be a good thing in the long run, even if the next few years turn out to be difficult for the industry to endure.

Now, yes, we can point to players in the newspaper industry who are doing fantastic interactive-media work and devote significant resources to the online side. But let's face it, the Googles and Yahoo!s of the world run circles around newspapers when it comes to technological innovation. Perhaps a little industry hardship will end up shifting priorities such that the newspaper industry attempts to play some serious catch-up.