The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado announced that tomorrow’s newspaper will be its last. This 150 year old newspaper, the oldest in Denver, is closing because of significant losses last year and no improvement in sight. The metro population of Denver is 2.8 million.
It is almost incomprehensible to us in Australia that a city of that size can not support a daily newspaper. Why? Is it that Americans are that different to us in their habits? (reading newspapers) is it because of the quality of the offering? is it because of the next generation growing up who have no interest in newspapers?
There are probably many reasons. The question is, how many years will it be before someone makes a decision like that in Melbourne or Sydney?
Time will tell.
If you spend some time finding out what went wrong with this newspaper it comes back to management and poor direction.
This paper apparently had a penetration of 36% plus more on weekends, what went wrong was simply they were selling it too cheap just so they could gain readers from their rivals.
This dumb idea has a lot in common with the rivalry between news and fairfax, next monday the tele will still be a dollar compared to the herald 1.40. simple maths say the tele needs to sell 40% more plus the extra cost of publishing just to stay even no wonder it went out of business.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/staff/john-temple/
thanks Paul for the link
also read the reader’s view as to why their local paper went under.
One comment was especially interesting-
why buy the paper when you can get it for free on the internet and it’s constantly updated!
Just like fairfax and news limited papers.
Hi Theo
You are right why! After reading this weeks Time magazine it touches on Newspaper publishers tossing around the idea of increasing revenue from their online business’s. One such idea being floated is a small charge to be debited from your account if you want to read the full story of a particular news item upon clicking on the link.
I am not so sure it will be free for much longer.