The Political Whore

What else are you going to do after you cut daily home delivery to an entire county? Raise your rack prices.

The Tampa Tribune will increase the price of single copy newspapers – those sold at stores and in boxes — starting Monday.

Single copies of the newspaper will now cost 75 cents Monday through Saturday and $1 on Sunday.

“Most metropolitan newspapers charge in these price ranges for their newspaper as single copy purchases. We publish a fresh, unique, local paper every single day,” said Denise Palmer, publisher and president of the paper in a prepared statement.

wow.

I suppose that looking at print circulation numbers is anachronistic, if not downright depressing. But the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s Fas-Fax report is out and it is across-the-board bad news for Florida print journalism.

Circulation fell at all major FLA dailies, and it fell 7 percent across the nation. That is 3 million-plus fewer print readers than six months ago.

Michael Hinman over at The Business Journal reports:

The St. Petersburg Times remains one of the nation’s top 25 circulated newspapers, but like its counterparts, the Times’ daily numbers are eroding.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations ranked the Times 22nd in the nation in Monday through Friday circulation over a six-month period ending in March despite a 10 percent dip that brought its daily print run to 283,093 compared to 316,007 a year ago. Although it lost more than 32,000 subscribers over the past year, its declines weren’t as sharp as many other newspapers in the top 25, and it even moved ahead of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in overall Monday through Friday circulation.

Daily circulation at The Tampa Tribune dropped by more than 25,000 subscribers Monday through Friday, representing an 11.4 percent drop to 195,277 subscribers. The Sarasota-Herald Tribune lost 17,650 subscribers, a 15.4 percent fall to an average of 97,254 subscribers.

I was on vacation last week when I got an e-mail from a former Tampa Tribune reporter, pointing out that the Tallahassee Democrat had reported that our former print journalism home (I was a staff writer there from 1988-1992) was going to soon cease publishing on newsprint in favor of an online-only presence in tbo.com:

The Christian Science Monitor quit being a newspaper: It will publish online only. Reportedly, the Tampa Tribune will follow suit in January.

I was flabbergasted. Not because of the idea of something drastic happening to the print product (which just about everyone in the business that I speak with expects) but because I thought I had missed it being verified. Sticks of Fire even picked it up. So I e-mailed the writer of the piece, the Democrat’s Gerald Ensley, about where this story had been reported, and he replied:

No, it hasn’t been reported. I had heard it from several people in the business and originally wrote it as “Rumor has it that the Tampa Tribune . . . ” For brevity, it got shortened to “Reportedly.” I wish it hadn’t.

Sorry.
Gerald Ensley

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