Newspapers

Register publisher asks readers to understand

Terry Horne writes on the Orange County paper's blog that he's sorry so many readers are unhappy with recent changes in format and coverage, but "The Register is under economic duress."

Those of you who are in business can understand what that means. Less than 15 percent of revenue of a newspaper comes from subscriptions. More than 85 percent comes from advertising. Large newspapers all across the country have been challenged by Internet competition for advertising. We have also been hit with huge declines in employment and real estate advertising for the past year — in the tens of millions of dollars range for the Register....

Please don’t credit our decisions to greed. The family ownership has agreed to accept dramatically lower performance, both last year and in our projected 2008 business year. They have refused to force management to take some of the more drastic cost-cutting steps taken by many publically owned newspaper companies.

He uses the variant spelling of publicly. Via Romenesko


More by Kevin Roderick:
Standing up to Harvey Weinstein
The Media
LA Times gets a top editor with nothing but questions
LA Observed Notes: Harvey Weinstein stripped bare
LA Observed Notes: Photos of the homeless, photos that found homes
Recent Newspapers stories on LA Observed:
Read the LA Times response to Los Angeles Magazine's piece
NYT thins more in Los Angeles, and the LAT hires locally
Oops: 6-year-old Betty Broderick story runs in LA Times*
More details on mixed use plan for LA Times buildings
Tribune doubles down on the whole Tronc thing
Tribune Publishing sending its IT jobs to India
Tribune Publishing slides toward parody
Sadly for LAT, this might be worst Tribune yet


 

LA Observed on Twitter