If there is any one word to describe the newspaper industry, it is "decline." Many institutions have closed and advertising revenues are falling across the board. The fact is, people are getting more of their news online and from sources that aren't always first found in print. There has certainly been a lot of complaining from newspaper executives that whine about the big bad internet, the same medium they had belittled not ten years ago. Of course that doesn't apply to every publication, like New York's very own Times-Union, which despite losing a chunk of their print audience, still managed to add readers at a clip that puts them in the top ten of the nation.
From The Times-Union:
The newspaper's net combined audience of print and online readership increased 8.7 percent to 506,929 for the six months prior to March 31, the seventh-best growth of any U.S. daily, according to Editor & Publisher, an industry trade journal. The measurement includes those who have read a newspaper's print edition in the past seven days and its Web site within the past 30 days.The Times Union also recorded a slight increase in Sunday circulation, rising to 141,105 for the October-to-March period from 141,064 in the same six months a year earlier.
But the newspaper's average Monday-through-Friday circulation decreased to 78,973 in the most recent reporting period from 89,257 a year earlier. That's an 11 percent decline.
The reality about print newspapers is that they are on their way out. What the newspaper industry does about it is up to them. For the Times Union at least, they are doing something right to gain overall readers and for that, they are commended.
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