Times are changing...

Times are changing…

At The New York Times Company papers - the Times, International Herald Tribune, and Boston Globe — print and digital ad dollars dipped 6.6 percent to $220 million, while circulation revenue was up 8.3 percent to $233 million in 2012 (NYmag.com 2012). This change is truly interesting, as it is an industry that has always relied on advertising to make money. I wanted to find out how this panned out, since this article was back in 2012, so I did some research…

It seems as if this trend is still continuing, The New York Times Company reported in 2014 that circulation revenues increased 1.4 percent and other revenues increased 7.7 percent, while advertising revenues declined 4.1 percent. The question would be what would change as a result of less advertising. After reading a little more on the topic, the answer is that the public would probably have to pay more for the paper as newspaper focus on circulation revenue. Is this actually bad? Or would the quality of journalism improve? Is circulation revenue just a direct replacement for advertising revenue and have no impact on the quality of journalism? Will this eventually result in an uneven access to news, perhaps based on money? – I guess this is happening with the rise of paywalls.

Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian editor-in-chief, seems to think so too. "If you erect a universal pay wall around your content then it follows you are turning away from a world of openly shared content.” Yet with the decline of advertising dollars, the industry has to reshape its business model, or it will collapse. I feel that paywalls aren't such a bad thing if it provides access to top notch news, it may even improve the quality of journalism – (since subscribers have to get the “better” articles than non-subscribers), but then again news should be available to everyone. It is indeed a tricky question without obvious solutions. However, as long as there is reasonable access to newspapers I would rather pay to keep the industry alive and maintain the quality of journalism as the fourth estate. Unfortunately, money is a necessity as we live in a time where profit is king.