It’s one of Jim’s topics, I know, but this post from a former Richmond Times-Dispatch employee, lays out the topic in sobering detail. Snip:
So here’s the thing: here’s why they’re even trying to keep the RTD going, despite its inevitable funeral, despite that it’s dead already and they keep kicking the corpse around: because they have to. As bad as the situation is, the paper is still bringing in revenue — just not a profit. Online advertising is nowhere near replacing the revenue that print advertising brings in. Sure, they’ll keep reducing the staff as circulation drops lower and lower; they’ll redesign the look not to make a better product, but to cut page count, and thereby newsprint costs. They’ll save money where they can, but revenue will continue to fall . . . because the core product, the newspaper, has been replaced by news on television and the Internet.
The RTD may or may not be dead — that’s sometimes very hard to tell. But I take responsibility for taking part in its demise, because I am a former subscriber.
Little did I know that, as a Richmond.com columnist, I might also be part of the effort to keep the print paper alive:
That’s why the purchase of Richmond.com was considered a sound investment: a massive increase of page views and potentially an increase of ad revenue.
Happy to be of service. But there’s more than a grain of truth here. many locals I know read Richmond.com. The RTD? Eh, not so much. If they subscribe at all, it’s more from a sense of habit than a need for information. And that habit is an increasingly easy one to kick.