Extra Extra

This is not good news for the newspaper industry--which has been beset with little more than bad news for quite some time:

Average weekday circulation at U.S. newspapers fell 2.6 percent during the six month-period ending in September in the latest sign of trouble in the newspaper business, an industry group reported Monday.

Sunday circulation also fell 3.1 percent at newspapers reporting to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, according to an analysis of the data by the Newspaper Association of America.

The declines from the same period a year ago show an acceleration of a years-long trend of falling circulation at daily newspapers as more people, especially young adults, turn to the Internet for news and as newspapers cut back on less profitable circulation.

It's not all the Internet. Newspaper circulation actually peaked back in 1988--and it's been nothing but downhill ever since. Blame the one-two punch of cable news and the Internet, combined with generational changes in how people get news and other content. Expect circulation numbers toget even worse.

Oh, and I meant to blog about this last week, but was swamped with Project From Hell:

Newspaper Ad Circulars Find Their Way Online

Gannett, one of the nation's biggest newspaper publishers, said it would introduce a new service on its newspaper Web sites next month that displays banner ads that readers can expand into a virtual version of the weekly local circulars so familiar to offline newspaper readers.

Industry executives said the service, called PaperBoy, devised by a unit of Gannett called PointRoll, would give national advertisers a way to reach online readers in local markets with promotions tied to neighborhood stores.

Newspapers are trying to protecting their turf from Google, Yahoo and other Internet companies that have moved more aggressively to serve local information and ads to readers.

This isn't that surprising. Even Clipper Magazine and those Val-Pac coupons that come in the mail have URLs that drive coupon clippers online to get even more coupons. And I'm told the venerable Entertainment book has an online component, too.

It must be a sign of getting older: I have actually started clipping coupons from those Val-Pac mailings. My problem, though, is that they come addressed to "Smart Shopper" and it took me a while to stop writing "Addressee Unknown" on them and putting them back in the mailbox.