jay fredrickson

L.A. Times: The Inconvenient Poster Child for the Newspaper Debacle

When it is mentioned that print products are 80% margin and web 20%, I'd like to add that the profit from preprints is closer to 90%. Think about it, for a few dollars per M, those fat inserts are put into Sunday papers at the cost of $50/M. As circulation contunes to plummet, the amount of revenue from preprints drops at the same rate as the circulation slide, if the same advertisers continue to run.

Now that classified ads and those big thick classified sections have disappeared, the margins that newspapers are enjoying are dropping rapidly. Unfortuantely for everyone in this business, the only thing left to cut is head count. sad but true. wall street wins, newspapers lose.