November 9, 2009 Sober Mood at New York Post as Circulation Spirals Lower
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/media/09post.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print Three years ago, Col Allan, the editor of The New York Post, pumped his fist and waded into a cheering crowd at a Midtown restaurant, celebrating The Post’s overtaking its rival, The Daily News, in weekday circulation. The Post trumpeted the news on a Times Square billboard and in its pages. More than any major American newspaper, Rupert Murdoch’s Post had staked its name and future on selling more copies, cutting the price in 2000 from 50 cents to 25 and in 2001 bringing in Mr. Allan, who punched up the tabloid’s irreverence, hard edge and love of gossip. Circulation — which for The Post overwhelmingly means street sales — climbed above 700,000 from about 440,000 in just six years, then shifted hard the other way. Nearly every paper in America has lost circulation, but The Post more than most — down almost 30 percent in 2.5 years, to 508,000 in the most recent reporting period, against 544,000 for The Daily News. The slide accelerated after The Post’s price returned to 50 cents last year. And this year, The Daily News has surged far ahead in online readership. Mr. Allan, who called it “a joyous occasion” when The Post took the lead, now takes a more subdued view of the competition, saying in an e-mail exchange that “whether we are a little in front or a little behind has no impact on our forward business plan.” Still, he voiced contempt for the industry’s conventional wisdom that as advertising tumbles, some sales no longer make business sense, and circulation should be allowed to fall. “Publishers who believe maintaining circulation is impossible and financially undesirable should not be publishers,” he said. “They are defeatists.” With a proliferation of online news sources, it is harder than ever for a paper to be a must-read, said Donald Forst, the former top editor of New York Newsday, The Village Voice and The Boston Herald. Sites like Gawker and TMZ compete with The Post’s influential Page Six for gossip, while the Internet allows organizations like The New York Observer and New York magazine to compete on breaking news. “The tabloids still do the things they used to do, but a lot of it doesn’t feel as compelling,” Mr. Forst said. In particular, he said, “there’s so much gossip out there that you can go lots of other places, and I think it’s hurt The Post especially.” Founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, The Post has been in business longer than any other American daily. For decades under the ownership of Dorothy Schiff, it was the voice of Eastern liberalism. She sold it to the Australian-born Mr. Murdoch in 1976 — one of his first American ventures — and he quickly made it conservative and racier. He sold the paper in 1988, then bought it back in 1993, maintaining its smart, bare-knuckles sensibility and its doggedly conservative slant. The economics of The Post are not like those of other papers; it has not turned a profit in decades under the News Corporation and its chairman, Mr. Murdoch. The industry relies most on the circulation advertisers like best: home delivery and Sunday editions. But three-quarters of The Post’s circulation is single-copy sales, and its sales are weakest on Sundays. It is a “second read” for many people, a discretionary purchase on the way to or from work, easily skipped when money is tight. And The Post does not stand alone, so the meaning of profitability is somewhat different from most newspapers. In 2007, Mr. Murdoch also bought The Wall Street Journal, a bigger and more prestigious paper. He has since decided to add a New York edition to that paper and a corps of local news reporters — giving him a two-pronged, high-low strategy to take on competitors in New York, The Daily News, a tabloid, and The New York Times, a broadsheet. It is similar to his set-up in London, with the serious Times of London and the tabloid Sun. The Post and Mr. Allan answer to a constituency of one, and Mr. Murdoch shows no outward sign of tiring of the paper or its editor. Though it has pushed out some of its roughly 300 editorial employees, pruned expense budgets, frozen salaries for years and eliminated some sections, like a short-lived Page Six magazine, The Post has actually done less newsroom cutting than most big papers. But in a nervous time for newspapers, people at The Post have reason to wonder about their future, starting with its losses — as high as $70 million last year, according to some people briefed on the finances — which have become a bigger concern for News Corporation executives. Since buying The Journal two years ago, Mr. Murdoch has shifted much of his attention to that paper, leaving some at The Post to wonder whether the creation of a metropolitan news staff at The Journal will affect the level of losses the company will be willing to absorb at The Post. “People want to know what it means for us, whether he’ll lose interest,” said a Post reporter who, like several colleagues and people who have recently left, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of angering Mr. Allan and Mr. Murdoch. They say that while The Journal has a stylish new newsroom in the News Corporation building on the Avenue of the Americas, The Post’s dingy quarters a few floors away need renovation. Before going to The Post, Mr. Allan was known in his native Australia for his red-faced tirades at employees who fail to deliver, competitive acumen and the occasional fistfight, a reputation that has not mellowed in New York. But employees say the fun, the “band of brothers” sense that they enjoyed about The Post, has eroded. “The Post doesn’t pay that well, and there have always been people who lived in fear of Col, but that’s easier to take when things are improving, circ is rising, your pay is rising and papers are hiring,” said a journalist who recently left the paper. A physically unimposing man with glasses and receding hairline, Mr. Allan, 56, looks more like an insurance executive than a boss famed for chewing people out, long drinking bouts at Elaine’s and a genuine zeal for trash-talking the competition. Few people who have worked with him claim to have seen a soft side. “I am a pussycat,” he said, “most of the time.” But he was more forthcoming in a 2007 interview with New York magazine, saying, “I drive hard, maybe a little too hard sometimes, and I am occasionally unreasonable, maybe.” For decades, Mr. Murdoch’s favorite strategy was to slash prices and increase circulation, grabbing market share and weakening his competitors. But the steps The Post took to bolster circulation, notably the price cut, were expensive, and its losses mounted. News Corporation executives insisted that the circulation drive was not about mere bragging rights but was part of a plan to draw more advertising, improve the bottom line and undermine The Daily News. Lachlan Murdoch, a son of Rupert Murdoch who was then a company executive, said in 2001, “This paper has to get to profitability,” and there have been similar pronouncements by others. “Of course we believed greater circulation would improve the paper’s financial performance,” Mr. Allan said. “In many ways, it did, exposing us to advertisers who remain with us today because we produce results for them. But we are living through a rapidly changing media landscape, and all publishers need to be nimble.” -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
