‘Newsonomics’ is depressing reading
I'm reading Ken Doctor's new book "Newsonomics." It is depressing.
I heard him speak this past week at the American Society of News Editors conference in Washington, D.C., where he noted that newspapers should not solely blame the Internet for their woes, because newspaper circulation has been declining for 50 years.
Here are some factoids from the Page 2:
— American newspapers cut 8,000 newsroom jobs in the past two years.
— Daily newspaper ad revenue peaked in 2000 at $49 billion. In 2009 the revenue was $28 billion.
— The average age of an evening TV news viewer is 63. The average age of a newspaper reader is 57.
— U.S. teens watch TV 60 percent less than their parents and spend 600 percent more time online than their parents.
On another page he goes through some convoluted assumptions to come up with a questionable, but as good as any, calculation that due to newsroom job losses 828,000 news stories went unwritten and unread last year.
Doctor, who spent 21 years in the newspaper business, blogs at Content Bridges.
