New York Times Co. Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson said the namesake newspaper is holding on to its circulation as the Wall Street Journal promotes its New York section and cuts advertising rates.
“We are definitely not seeing any effect in regard to the circulation,” Robinson said today in an interview in New York. “Are they discounting? Yes, they are, very, very heavily.”
The two newspapers are competing for readers on their home turf as industrywide circulation sales have plunged. News Corp.’s Wall Street Journal introduced its metro section in April, in part to attract readers from the New York Times.
Times Co., based in New York, has maintained its own advertising rates since the Wall Street Journal’s “Greater New York” section debut, Robinson said.
“If they’d like to leave those dollars on the table and give free advertising, we’re more than happy to clean them up,” she said.
A Wall Street Journal spokeswoman, Emily Edmonds, said in an e-mail that the newspaper has increased advertising revenue in April and May, without giving further details.
The New York Times’s nationwide circulation fell 8.5 percent to 951,063 in the six months through March, while circulation at the Journal, which includes paying Internet readers, rose less than 1 percent to 2.09 million, data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations show.
“We are going to maintain the brand promise of the New York Times, regardless of the competition,” Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in the interview.
With more readers accessing its content on the Internet, Times Co. will lower costs such as printing and distribution, Sulzberger said.
“So you don’t need to spend as much money to make as much money,” he said.
Robinson said advertisers supported Times Co.’s decision to begin charging some readers to access its nytimes.com website next year. Times Co. is still determining the details, including price, she said.
The publisher sent a letter to the Wall Street Journal yesterday, demanding it halt using the advertising slogan “Not Just Wall Street. Every Street.” Times Co. said it had previously employed that language for an advertisement.
Sulzberger today declined to comment further on the action.
In a response to the New York Times today, News Corp.’s Dow Jones, which publishes the Journal, said it was “within our rights to use the tag line to compare our offerings.”
“Don’t be too concerned,” the letter said. ‘We never intended to run the ad for too long.” Emily Edmonds, a spokeswoman for Dow Jones, said the ad was used just once in the New York Post and the Journal.
Times Co. has asked Apple Inc. for approval to create a free iPhone application called “The Scoop” that focuses on New York City dining and nightlife, Sulzberger said. He said he expected it to be available within a couple weeks.
Times Co., which also owns the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune, fell 43 cents, or 4.8 percent, to $8.50 at 4:02 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have declined 31 percent this year.
(Source: Bloomberg News)
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5 Responses
Gimme a break!! The Slimes circulation is dropping and dropping.
The NY Slimes with their antisemitic articles and skewed news continues to drop in circulation along with readership of papers in general.
Remember tghey promoted all this “green” and “recycling” stuff so we are all “saving trees” by not subscribing.
“We are definitely not seeing any effect in regard to the circulation,” Robinson is quoted. But if you read to paragraph 7 of the story, you learn that “The New York Times’s nationwide circulation fell 8.5% to 951,063 in the six months through March, while circulation at the Journal, which includes paying Internet readers, rose less than 1% to 2.09 million, data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations show.”
How can such a juxtaposition earn the headline “NY Times Says Circulation Holding Up to WSJ Assault” instead of something like “NY Times Official Puts Desperate Spin on Plummeting Circulation Figures”? (Which would itself be a pretty soft way of calling her a liar.)
The Times, like many other newspapers, is going down the tubes; demonstrating that it is run by fantasists certainly can’t help matters, even if they have Bloomberg headline writers and the Obama Administration eager to bail them out.
May the New York Times die as a rag paper. It has Jewish owners but has always been anti-semitie even during the Holocaust. I for one will not cry when this paper is buried for good. The only pproblem obama wants to give our tax dollars for it just like government motors, banks, insurance companies etc. If he gives momey they difinited will not beable to WRITE AGAINST him
3. Typical liberal media …. WONDERFUL headline but you have to read the ENTIRE story to get some bit of the facts.