The main source of revenue for newspapers isn't cover prices or even display advertising. It's classifieds. Until the internet came along, your local newspaper had a guaranteed cut of thousands of little transactions every single week.
Then craigslist and ebay and real estate websites and car sites and all their ilk proliferated. Now I can, often for free, advertise something small. That sucks the single biggest source of revenue directly out of newspapers.
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I used to work at a newspaper a few years ago, and in 2009 I posted this:
http://clubtroppo.com.au/2009/06/02/whats-killing-the-newspa...
The main source of revenue for newspapers isn't cover prices or even display advertising. It's classifieds. Until the internet came along, your local newspaper had a guaranteed cut of thousands of little transactions every single week.
Then craigslist and ebay and real estate websites and car sites and all their ilk proliferated. Now I can, often for free, advertise something small. That sucks the single biggest source of revenue directly out of newspapers.
And yes, I'm still working on that startup.