• BtoB, Wednesday, May 10, 2006 11:30 AM

Welcome to the world of the shrinking newspaper. In the last year or so, several major papers have announced they intend to either shrink their physical size or drop certain familiar features, such as stock tables. All of this, needless to say, is in reaction to the migration of the papers' readers and advertisers to the World Wide Web. This quite good BtoB piece details, paper by paper, who has shrunk, who plans to, and how. Many familiar brands, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal among them, are included. "With declining circulation, a relatively flat ad market and sluggish stock prices, some analysts say the writing is on the wall for newspaper companies. In an increasingly digital age, newspapers must decide what content is better suited for online than print," writes BtoB's Matthew Schwartz. "Marketers say the trend is accelerating." The ongoing shifts of print content to online "is the tip of the iceberg," says Stephen Carlson, associate media director at StarLink Worldwide. "People are getting conditioned to go online. There's probably going to be a small percentage of readers who are going to be upset by the changes. But in the longer term more companies will be pulling more information from print to try and boost the newspaper as a media vehicle and get more access to consumers online." James Murphy, chief marketing and communications officer for Accenture, says, "You're going to see more insight, color, and features[in newspapers]. I'm reluctant to predict the demise of newspapers, but there's got to be much more of an integrated model."

Read the whole story at BtoB »