The 2008 Plunge: Worst in Newspaper Industry’s History

May 06, 2009•Blog Posts•Newspapers•Print•Traditional Media• by jangelakos

Johanna C.

2008 served as the “year of the plunge” for many different components of the advertising world, but the “plunge of all plunges” was in the newspaper medium. The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) released some figures on overall domestic print revenue for the 2008 year, and let’s just say that things aren’t looking too pretty.

Overall ad revenue has dropped for the third consecutive year, while sales plummeted approximately 23%. Real estate and automotive decreased a respective 37.8% and 29.1% as a result of both struggling industries. But the “drop of all drops” was in help-wanted ad revenue, which decreased an astronomical 42.5% solely within the 2008 year.

Though online ad revenue withstood the whirlwind at only a 1.8% decline, this is still considered a huge hit to the newspaper medium, considering that previous years indicated double-digit revenue increases.

So now that the disastrous year of 2008 has come and gone, what’s to come for the remainder of 2009?

A Deloitte study says that the newspaper medium’s outlook has gone from “difficult” to “impossible,” so don’t expect any major revelations in the industry to occur anytime soon.