You have to stand in awe of the print media's desperation to reverse its decline. Having realized that newspaper circulation is destined to decline indefinitely, they've found a new way to report growth: Change the way you report your numbers! According (subscription required) to The Wall Street Journal:Circulation at the nation's biggest newspapers slid again in the latest six-month period, by an average of 2.6%, a sign of continuing defection of readers and advertisers to the Internet.
But in an attempt to draw attention away from the sagging circulation data, the industry is trying to highlight a new measure: the total number of online and print newspaper readers instead of simply the number of print papers delivered everyday.
But the advertising industry isn't buying it: "This is helpful information, but we can't just rely on readership and audience," said Merle Davidson, director of Media Services at J.C. Penney Co. "Print circulation is still very important."Of course it is. That's because newspapers that trumpet their online readership are competing in a whole different space -- against websites, including BloggingStocks.
The industry has essentially changed its "accounting" to try to portray the state of the business in a different light. If this sounds like what some of the great accounting frauds did, that's because it is.
Of course, this isn't fraud, because everything is disclosed. It's just desperation.
Where have all the consumers gone?
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