August 28, 2006
economist: newspapers now an endangered species
There was a good piece in the Economist’s paper edition on the future of newspapers last week, which, appropriately, is also available online. I hate to see great papers shutting down, but at the same time, I’m all for less paper trees being cut down. I’d happily pay for my Times online — which I more or less do now, getting the paper edition on Sundays, which gets me a free Times Select subscription the rest of the week, with access to more of the archives than I ever need to use. That said, with the Times’ operations costing something like $700 million a year, and their online site bringing in $66 million at last count, it’s still a bit scary to wonder where the twain shall meet.
The article’s title is “Who killed the newspaper?” — and while Craigslist, offered in the article, is an oft-mentioned suspect, the same could be said of the New York Times itself, which has been aggressively moving into national markets long supporting their own great papers.
