The print industry woke up with a bad hangover this morning.
Over the last six months, circulation at most major newspapers has nose-dived--advertisers will flee and more journalists will lose their jobs.
Here's a link from Jeff Bercovici at Portfolio calculating the damage (The original Editor & Publisher link won't open on my computer). Make sure you are sitting down: "Every other paper in the top 15 lost circulation, with the Dallas Morning News breaking the double-digit mark. (Its weekday average was 368,313, down 10.6 percent year-over-year.)"
But don't quit writing just yet. The whole industry is looking at the wrong metrics. When I checked Google Trends half-hour ago, these were the top four most-googled stories on the Internet: 1. mindy mccready 2. roger clemens 3. vanity fair 4. miley cyrus vanity fair.
As far as I can tell, those stories originated in print--The New York Daily News (which lost 2.09 percent circulation) broke the story about Roger Clemens and The New York Post (which lost 2.35 percent circulation) broke the story about Miley Cyrus.
So, while these papers are hitting new circulation lows in print, these salacious scoops are being circulated all over the Internet. For better or for worse, writers need to pay attention to these new popularity metrics.
Don't ignore Google Trends, it will steer advertising rates in the very near future.
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