Death By Month: Tracking the Newspaper Industry's Decline (NYT, DJ, TBC, GCI, MNI)

We don't know about you, but we're sick of having to dig for context every time a newspaper reports monthly sales--so we've put it all in a handy online spreadsheet.  We will now be analyzing monthly revenue info for The New York Times (NYT), Dow Jones (DJ), Lee Enterprises (LEE), The McClatchy Company (MNI), Gannett (GCI), and Tribune (TBC)--the latter until the Sam Zell deal closes and it disappears into invisible, private equity slash-and-burn mode.

We won't bore you with the July details--you can see them for yourself--but the industry totals are below.  Also, the bottom line:  Every day we read about how amazingly fast newspaper web sites are growing, how newspaper reporters are now blogging like crazy, how newspaper online revenue is soaring, etc.  And all of this is true.  The trouble is--it's barely making a difference. 

Despite 27% year-over-year newspaper online revenue growth in July--as compared with shrinking print revenue--online still only accounts for 7% of the total. (For context, the total monthly online revenue for the entire public newspaper industry amounts to approximately 15% of Google's monthly U.S. revenue).  Put differently, the newspaper industry lost $83 million of print advertising revenue year-over-year in July--and gained only $23 million of online ad revenue.  Online won't save this industry with numbers like that.

NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY TOTALS            July-07                July-06
Monthly Revenue (000s)                      $1,606,186          $1,687,499
        Y/Y Change                                    -5%           
                        
Advertising Revenue                            $1,117,460          $1,200,310
        Y/Y Change                                    -7%            
        % of Total                                       70%                        71%

Circulation Revenue                            $326,382            $326,148
        Y/Y Change                                    0%           
        % of Total                                      20%                        19%
                        
Online Revenue                                    $108,973            $85,796
        Y/Y Change                                    27%            
        % of Total                                        7%                        5%

Source: Company filings, Silicon Alley Insider estimates.

See Also:
NYT: Good News!  July Ads Only Declined 3.5%
A Bigger Problem for the Newspaper Industry Than Revenue Declines
Running the Numbers: Why Newspapers are Screwed