The earnings season is upon us and Lee Enterprises (LEE), just reported the worst thing that could happen for newspapers. Sure their profit was down considerably, but the real shocker was in the online revenue.
Online revenue was down just over nine percent.
Newspapers have been calling for online to be their growth engine for the longest time. As print revenues decline, the assumption was that online revenue would grow to offset the losses. Even the most bulish didn't think that online could replace all of the losses in print, but nearly everyone thought growth would continue to explode in the onine realm.
So I'll repeat: Lee's online revenue was down over nine percent.
No one will deny the losses in print, but if newspaper companies can't grow online their hopes are even dimmer than expected. Thus far Lee Enterprises is the only newspaper company that has reported losing revenue online, but there's still a few left to report.
Friday, July 25, 2008
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1 comments:
I deal with the online people regularly. The top two guys, Greg
Schermer and Jeff Herr, are not only clueless about why they just had
a 9% advertising drop in the last quarter, but they are pinning their
survival on the return of the print ad market as a way to cover the
unexpected drop in online ad sales. If the top online guys are
clueless at Lee, and the rest of the management isnt replacing them,
this company is in serious trouble. Here's a link to a discussion in
the blog Silicon Alley Insider that talks about what is happening: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/uh-oh-newspaper-digital-revenue-suffering-too
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