The Audit Bureau of Circulations released this morning the spring figures for the six months ending March 31, 2009, showing that the largest [metropolitan newspapers] continue to shed daily and Sunday circulation — now at a record rate. — Editor & Publisher
When I first went online back in 1996 or 97 and began exploring the web, one of the first things I noticed was that contact information was easy to find on some websites and exasperatingly difficult to locate on others. Making sure people know who you are and how to get hold of you is plain common sense that should be obvious to everyone — especially professional communicators like journalists, admen, and PR people. But I soon discovered that the one type of website on which it was almost always nearly impossible to find contact information was the newspaper website. Contacts for advertising sales were readily accessible, of course, but the members of the editorial staff might as well have been deep-cover spies, their identities carefully hidden and even their actual existence uncertain. It was as if the editors and reporters didn’t want to hear from anyone. Clearly, they did not “get” the new media. With their news-noses stopped up, they could not detect the odor of change and missed the biggest story ever. They got scooped.