Newspaper Business Sections Dying Off
By Jeremy Mullman | Source: Advertising Age
Shrinking newspapers forced to make cuts are increasingly regarding their stand-alone business sections as expendable.
The Denver Post — which folded its business section into other sections on every day but Sunday — this month became at least the eighth daily to cut its stand-alone daily business section since early 2007. The Orange County Register made a similar move just a week earlier.
While the cuts are a source of much consternation among business journalists — and also to public-relations executives at small local firms and agencies that may have trouble securing news coverage without them — analysts, advertisers and publishers say that the stand-alone sections were relatively poor sources of ad revenue that tended to be overmatched by national and online competition on anything beyond the most hyperlocal stories.
Said veteran newspaper-industry analyst Ed Atorino, of Benchmark Capital: “You do get a story once in awhile about a local storeowner or a closing or something, which you might miss, but most of what’s in those sections is rip and read [wireservice copy],” he said. “With all the business news on TV and the internet, the consumer is getting it someplace else.”
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