Newspaper

The other day I read about another industry being impacted by the recession. The newspaper industry in the developed world is said to be hit hard. At the first look, I couldn’t believe that newspapers can also get impacted. Recession or not, people will need the news at all times.

 

But the revenue generators of any newspaper are the advertisements. With most of the industries hit by the recession, there are lesser advertisers, which mean lesser revenue. The newspapers have a huge amount of cost attached with them. They have reporters in many parts of the world, editors, printers and many more. With other industries in recession and no reduction in cost, revenues are bound to decrease. This decline signals reduction in jobs for news reporters. This would lead to a shift towards free lance correspondents to decrease the fixed costs.

 

The online media, in the same period has not seen the same decline. It proves a shift in the readership towards the online medium. With increased ease of access, online media does indeed serve in a better way. Someone interested in the stock market news would directly go to moneycontrol.com instead of digging for the information of his interest in a large business page of a newspaper. Same would be applicable for entertainment, sports news, etc. Also, with much more resources available on the net, the available content also increases dramatically.

 

I just hope the recession has bottomed out. The longer it is there, more and more industries would get affected and the spiral would never end.