Following links provided by The Politico led me to an AP piece which shows the growing concern for print news.
The decline in U.S. newspaper circulation is accelerating as the industry struggles with defections to the Internet and tumbling ad revenue.
Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that average daily circulation dropped 10.6 percent in the April-September period from the same six-month span in 2008. That was greater than the 7.1 percent decline in the October 2008-March 2009 period and the 4.6 percent drop in the April-September period of 2008.
Sunday circulation fell 7.5 percent in the latest six-month span.
As expected, The Wall Street Journal has surpassed USA Today as the top-selling newspaper in the United States. Although the Journal's average Monday-Friday circulation largely remained unchanged at 2.02 million, USA Today saw its worst circulation decline ever, dropping more than 17 percent to 1.90 million. The newspaper has blamed reductions in travel for much of the circulation shortfall, because many of its single-copy sales come in airports and hotels.
The New York Times stayed in third place at 927,851, down 7.3 percent from the same period of 2008.
Not surprising to those of us that read Wall Street Journal is the fact that they are not in decline as most of the others are.
The Politico also delves into cable news shows and ratings.
....And new TV ratings showed that CNN, the cable network that prides itself on news coverage down the middle, finished dead last in prime-time against more partisan rivals like Fox News and MSNBC.
Excuse me for a second while I laugh myself off my chair.
CNN claims they report news coverage "down the middle"?
There are dozens of examples I could show here, but let me focus on one of the most recent.
CNN conducted a poll published September of 2009, which headlines "CNN Poll: Double-digit post-speech jump for Obama plan."
Two out of three Americans who watched President Barack Obama's health care reform speech Wednesday night favor his health care plans - a 14-point gain among speech-watchers, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national poll of people who tuned into Obama's address Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress.
At the end of the piece they show the samples used:
The sample of speech-watchers in this poll was 45 percent Democratic and 18 percent Republican. Our best estimate of the number of Democrats in the voting age population as a whole indicates that the sample is about 8-10 points more Democratic than the population as a whole.
Yet they report the findings as "news?"
All one has to do is a search on any search engine using the keywords CNN and Bias to see that reporting "down the middle" is nothing more than a joke.
In the meantime, for all the rhetoric cast against Fox News, it still trounces CNN in ratings. I will let readers decide for themselves why that is.
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