Herald Times Online Edition

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Permalink Reply by Santo on July 1, 2008 at 2:19pm

Yeah I definitely thought that was a crock of shit too! I mean I am not in B-town at the moment, but I used to like to read the HT

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Permalink Reply by Molly D'Eath on July 1, 2008 at 2:22pm

Cool, glad I'm not the only one. I don't live in Bloomington either, but would love to read Deke's column and other stuff.

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Permalink Reply by Molly D'Eath on July 1, 2008 at 3:18pm

Can you post a link to the talk forum you mentioned? Sounds entertaining.

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Permalink Reply by BURD on July 1, 2008 at 3:43pm

Yeah Herald Times online sucks ass!

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Permalink Reply by Chris G. on July 1, 2008 at 5:19pm

I sent a letter to various editors there a year or so ago. Gave them examples of many many similar college towns that don't have a subscription, pointed out that they limit their own reach because their stories won't get picked up by search engines, etc. They are special in their own minds...

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Permalink Reply by Mike Emmett on July 5, 2008 at 1:54am

Yes it is unfortunate. The really perplexing thing is that it is not even a very good newspaper, really not worth $17.95/ 3 months. I'd be curious to know how many subscribers they have at that rate. I'm sure they could do fine with ad supported content.

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Permalink Reply by Marco on August 4, 2008 at 12:15pm

The Herald-Times is ahead of the game in this regard, IMO Small town newspapers are dying off and this is the way the H-T needs to go to even exist in twenty years. The H-T only has one thing to offer that you can't get from other websites, and that is local content.

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Permalink Reply by Marco on October 28, 2008 at 11:49am

Newspaper circulation takes another hit. Whether or not the H-T charges for online access will probably be a moot point in a few years...

Newspapers see sharp circulation drop of 4.6 pct

Oct 27, 5:23 PM (ET)

By ANICK JESDANUN

NEW YORK (AP) - Circulation at the nation's daily newspapers is falling faster than anticipated this year as readers continue their migration to the Internet and papers narrow their distribution to cut costs.

The development, which compounds the fiscal challenge of plummeting advertising revenue, was revealed Monday when the Audit Bureau of Circulations released sales totals reported by newspapers for April through September.

Combined weekday circulation of all 507 papers that reported circulation totals this year and last averaged 38,165,848 in the six months ending in September, 4.6 percent below 40,022,356 a year earlier. The aggregate drop was only 2.6 percent in the September 2007 period, compared with September 2006.

Sunday circulation fell faster than daily - 4.8 percent, to 43,631,646 at the 571 papers with comparable totals. A year ago, Sunday circulation fell 3.5 percent.

Daily circulation at 16 of the 25 largest papers fell more than 5 percent in the latest period.

Circulation has been dropping at newspapers for decades, a trend sped up by readers shifting to the Internet. Newspapers also have lost advertising in recent years because of the Internet, and that decline accelerated this summer as the weak economy prompted advertisers to pull back on spending.

To boost revenue, many papers also have increased prices, a move that has caused small circulation drops.

This year's sharpening circulation drop also appears to result in part from the way papers are responding to losing ad revenue, said Rick Edmonds, media analyst at the journalism think tank Poynter Institute.

"Times are tough, and they are looking at everything that's in their expense base," he said. "Building new subscribers is an expensive proposition."

Consider The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where circulation declined 13.6 percent, the largest drop among the 25 largest papers.

The paper increased prices and reduced its distribution footprint by a third to 49 counties. Some of the counties dropped weren't even in Georgia and were more expensive to reach, said Bob Eickhoff, the paper's senior vice president for operations.

The Journal-Constitution also distributed fewer free and cut-rate promotional copies that readers might simply toss, figuring advertisers are more likely to want readers who consciously buy the paper, he said.

Randy Bennett, senior vice president for business development at the Newspaper Association of America, said focusing on core readers is a move by papers to improve value for advertisers.

But Ken Doctor, media analyst with Outsell Inc., said papers have been shrinking their territories for years without seeing such sharp circulation drops.

He blames the acceleration on reduced quality as papers drastically cut staff and other expenses.

"The fact that there are less pages, fewer stories, less familiar bylines, readers are noticing, and that's having an impact," Doctor said. "What is worrisome is the product is getting cut back even more."

With the economy in a major downturn, he said, newspaper readers are more likely than ever to drop their subscriptions because there is a free alternative - the Internet.

In a sign of hope, usage of newspaper Web sites grew nearly 16 percent in the third quarter, compared with last year, to an average of more than 68 million monthly unique visitors, the newspaper group said last week.

"Circulation does not tell the complete story," Bennett said.

But online ad sales haven't increased fast enough to offset the declines in print, which still makes up the bulk of a paper's revenue...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081027/D94334KG0.html

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Permalink Reply by Marco on December 11, 2008 at 10:36am

Who will mourn local newspapers?
By John Gapper
Published: December 10 2008 19:21 | Last updated: December 10 2008 19:21

They say that journalists prefer bad news to good news. There is plenty of that close to home.

This is becoming a terrible week for the US newspaper industry. On Monday, the Tribune Company, which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, filed for bankruptcy. The New York Times Company followed by saying it might mortgage its Renzo Piano-designed headquarters building by Times Square to reduce debt.

The recession has turned the long, slow decline of newspapers into a brisk fall. On Tuesday, I dropped into a UBS investor conference in New York to catch Gary Pruitt, chief executive of the McClatchy newspaper chain, calling its results “lousy”. At this rate, US newspapers will be lucky to make it to the weekend.

Many American journalists, facing job losses and the death of an industry they loved, regard it as a tragedy not just for them but for society. They fear that television, radio and blogs can never replace what newspapers provided for readers.

Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, put the point succinctly to National Public Radio earlier this month: “Good journalism does not come cheap. And, therefore, you’re not going to find a lot of blogs or non-profit websites that are going to build a Baghdad bureau...”

Read the rest of the article

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Permalink Reply by Marco on January 14, 2009 at 5:17pm

We'll be lucky if we even have a local newspaper in a year's time.

The Tribune Company (owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, etc.) is in bankruptcy.

The Gannet Company (publisher of USA Today, among others) has just announced a mandatory furlough of most employees.

Detroit News and Free Press have suspended newspaper deliveries for some days of the week.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News have announced they may simply shut down.

New York Times will almost certainly default on its billions of debt in May.

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Permalink Reply by Nicole on March 7, 2009 at 12:49am

As a student at IU, I am very unhappy with the fact that I have to subscribe just to get the front page details for the Herald Times. It forces me to get most of my news from the school paper, Indiana Daily Student, simply because it's available. But it would be nice to be able to access at least some of the city news. Especially emergency coverage. I lived here over the summer for the first time last year, and there was a car accident right outside me house. Ambulances were everywhere. I couldn't even read the details of the accident on the HT website the next day. The photo and clip on the story were on the homepage, and I couldn't read anything.

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