This week’s “On the move” segment of the Associated Press Sports Editor’s newsletter includes an item that Dave Ammenheuser, the assistant managing editor/sports and administration at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside Calif., is leaving to become the sports editor of the Tennessean in Nashville.
Here’s the eye-opening part: A few years ago, the Press-Enterprise had a sports staff of 43 with four assistant sports editors. The staff he’s leaving is comprised of just eight reporters.
That’s everything you need to know about the state of the newspaper industry, and my aim here isn’t to be critical but to show concern for my remaining colleagues and further explain why I tell aspiring journalists that they shouldn’t get into this business unless that can’t not do it (I hope that makes sense).
I’ll use my former newspapers as an example.
My first paper, the Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press, went from a daily circulation of 88,159 in 2000, to 67,492 in 2010. During the same time period, my third newspaper, the Appleton (Wisc.) Post-Crescent, went from 54,901 to 41,104.
My second newspaper, the Tucson (Ariz.) Citizen, now only has a scaled down on-line edition. When it ceased printing on May 16, 2009, the daily circulation was approximately 17,000, down from a high of 60,000 in the 1960s. It’s listed in the RIP section on newspaperdeathwatch.com.
As for Alabama, here are the latest circulation figures:
Birmingham News 102,991
Mobile Press-Register 81,003
Florence Courier Journal 70,839
Huntsville Times 44,462
St. Clair Times 37,000
Montgomery Advertiser 31,495
Dothan Eagle 27,966
Tuscaloosa News 27,274
In 2000, the Birmingham News’ circulation was 148,851, and Montgomery was 53,500. I may be a little off with this, but when I started at the Tuscaloosa News in 2004 the circulation was above 38,000.
It’s pretty much like this everywhere, with advertisers departing faster than the readers.
The Council of Economic Advisors recently crunched data from LinkedIn’s nearly 150 million members about industry trends from 2007-2011 and found that newspapers are the United States’ fastest-shrinking industry (while the fastest growing were the Internet following by online publishing).
Further bringing the point home to me was an announcement in the News-Press a couple of weeks ago, that a number of employees had taken early-retirement packages and called it a career. Among them were the person who first hired me, Keith Gibson, and the person who followed him as sports editor, Sam Cook. I wish them well.
Newspapers will always have a special place in my heart, but it's obvious that the whole industry is on the move, not just Ammenheuser.
No comments:
Post a Comment