Newspapers still need print edition, exec at Projo parent says

November 9th, 2011 at 9:21 am by under Nesi's Notes

A top executive at The Providence Journal’s parent company says he’s hopeful a shift toward getting more money from subscribers and less from advertisers will help its papers weather the storm.

“We don’t have an audience problem,” Jim Moroney, publisher of the Dallas Morning News, told students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin last week. The problem is the failure of digital advertising revenue to match the rates the company gets for print. “Advertising is not a dependent source of revenue going forward,” he said.

The share of the Projo’s revenue that comes from advertising sales has fallen from 82% in 2005 to 56% in the first nine months of this year, according to SEC filings. Circulation’s share rose from 17% to 36%, and the paper has also been signing more printing and distribution contracts. Moroney cited similar trends at his paper in Dallas.

But the print edition remains vital. Moroney said ads on DallasNews.com would generate a maximum of $14 million in annual revenue at current rates, compared with roughly $90 million from print circulation.

The newspaper business is in “a transition and that’s hard,” he said. A video of Moroney’s presentation is posted after the jump.

• Related: Full Projo paywall set for 2012 as advertising sales slump 11% (Nov. 3)

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2 Responses to “Newspapers still need print edition, exec at Projo parent says”

  1. Jake says:
    November 9, 2011 at 10:45 am

    Maybe my records, 8-track tapes, cassettes and CD’s will make a comeback too, since people still listen to music. When your audience looks elsewhere, and you can’t keep up, you have an audience problem, or, more accurately, your audience has a problem with you. Newsprint will continue to fill a niche market for decades, but it will no longer dominate. The Providence Journal has less than half its subscriber base of a decade ago, so why do they think that trend will change?

  2. Paul says:
    November 9, 2011 at 12:29 pm

    I wonder if they plan on not increasing the price for the next 19 years.