A new report from Outsell contends that newspaper circulation will continue to decline at a 3.5% annual rate as new consumers turn to the Internet for "News Right Now." Jack Loechner at MediaPost summarizes the report; newspapers will be most vulnerable on national topics and strongest on local topics, news, family events, and entertainment. Paywalls don't seem promising; 75% of these surveyed said they would look for free news elsewhere online if their newspaper Web sites required some sort of paid subscription.

A new study by the Media Management Center suggests that U.S. newspaper journalists are ready and even eager to make the transition to digital in their jobs. Life beyond print surveyed almost 3,800 journalists in 79 newsrooms across the U.S. Far from being resistant to change, almost half of the journalists surveyed said that their newsroom's transition from print to digital was going too slowly. Only 20% like things the way they are or long for a return to the good old days.

People seeking information about the recession were more likely to rely on television, radio, and print than the Internet, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. 84% of the people polled said they used television or radio to get news about the economy, 64% read newspapers, magazines, and books, and 48% used the Internet. Broadband users used the Internet more, but were still more likely to use broadcast and just as likely to use print to get their economic news. Pew's report is based on a telephone survey of 2,253 adults from March 26 to April 19, 2009.

Most newspapers continue to be profitable, despite the issues that you read about. The question many may be asking today is how long can they hold on? PriceWaterhouseCoopers has issued its Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2009-2013 and predicts an advertising turnaround in 2011 for the publishing industry. Even then it is not good news. Writing in his Paid Content blog, Rafat Ali quoted the following from the forecast:

• Four segments - recorded music, B2B publishing, newspapers, and consumer magazines - will suffer actual declines in total global revenues during 2009-2013 as a whole, in stark contrast to CAGR in excess of 6 percent in Internet access, Internet advertising, video games, and TV subscriptions and license fees, and of 4 percent in filmed entertainment, which will become an increasingly digitally-driven segment.


• Advertising revenues as a whole are facing a period of broad decline over the coming five years, with global advertising spend across all media projected to be still below its 2008 level in 2013. This means a "profound structural shift during the five years towards more targeted and cost-effective ad models enabled by digital. This in turn may result in a permanent reduction in total advertising spend, as dollars formerly 'wasted' through inaccurate targeting are saved and reallocated to other priorities," says the report.

It may sound odd that space on a low-tech newsletter could be desirable in an age of mass-market blogs, when young people increasingly rely on instant messaging, texts, and such sites as Twitter and Facebook instead of e-mail. But remember that signing up for and opening an e-mail newsletter is a much bigger commitment than passively clicking on a link that takes you to a blog post, notes Sarah Lacy in an article for BusinessWeek.com. One publisher she mentions commands $40 per 1,000 views of some newsletter ads. Newsletters likely won't keep large media enterprises afloat, but a carefully produced (for example, local content of value - not selling), well-targeted (opt-in - not spam) digest could mean near-term revenue, she says. Publishers can see how many people open an e-mail, how long they read it, and how many friends they forward it to. Advertisers eat up that kind of engagement.

"Easy to use" was one of the traits Jack Shafer found distinctive to the few Web sites he could cite as having found success with the fee-for-access model. Writing for Slate this week, Shafer said all share at least one of the following: "1) They are so amazing as to be irreplaceable. 2) They are beautifully designed and executed and extremely easy to use. 3) They are stupendously authoritative." Media Management Center researchers have heard the "easy to use" phrase for years. MMC associate Stacy Lynch offers some help on deciphering what that means in a blog post and her recent Web Favorite and Easy to Use studies for the Center.

The Yahoo advertising platform developed in partnership with nearly 500 newspapers may be able to reach 80 percent of online users in a geographic area, versus the 20 percent or less typically delivered by a single newspaper's Web site, an exec for the search engine told The Palm Beach Post. The network relies on behavioral targeting, sending users information on products they've recently browsed for online. For those concerned with privacy, Yahoo allows opt-outs. What do newspapers bring to the game? A local sales force.