According to an article on TheGlobeAndMail.com, The Vancouver Sun and The Province newspapers will offer their employees buyouts to deal with “unprecedented revenue declines,” a result of declining revenue from the newspapers’ declining revenue from print advertising.
This news is the stark reality of the print side of journalism, and just how dangerous it can be if a newspaper does not make the shift fast enough to increasing revenue through the digital side of advertising such as paywalls or online donation model incentives for their readers.
These two papers are part of a chain from Postmedia Network Inc. The Province was founded in 1898 and has a print circulation near 144,000, while the Sun was founded in 1912 and does about 155,000 copies a day. Both newspapers rely heavily on print advertising as their sole source of revenue. Almost 70 percent of revenue at Postmedia’s 10 big-city newspapers comes from printed advertisements.
Both papers plan on making a strong push for online digital advertising, making the paywall model the primary means of increasing revenue. This still does not undermine the fact that many employees, of the 600 that exist across both papers, will still lose their jobs in an effort to keep the newspapers in business.
In my opinion it is important for stories like this to be brought to the attention of readers and journalists alike. This way the consumers can see the reality of how important it is to support your local newspapers and also for the business side of things because it shows just how real the bleak future of print journalism is becoming. Business can’t wait to long in making their transition to online advertising, or how important it is to bolster their ad revenue spending budget for this growing side of the industry.
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