It’s no surprise that 2009 was the worst year the newspaper business has had in decades, but the scale of the damage, shown in figures released Wednesday by the Newspaper Association of America, is stunning.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Advertising revenue fell 27.2 percent, or more than $10 billion, from 2008 – which was, at the time, the industry’s worst year since the Depression. From its peak in 2005, newspaper ad revenue dropped 44.2 percent, from more than $49.4 billion to less than $27.6 billion last year. The last time advertisers spent less on newspapers was in 1986.
Online ad revenue, long the fast-rising hope of a deeply troubled industry, fell 11.8 percent last year, though some publishers say that it is growing again in 2010. Internet ads accounted for 10 percent of all newspaper
ad revenue.
Money made from print ads, which remains the bulk of newspaper revenue, dropped 28.2; the limited information released so far this year indicates that it is still dropping, but
at a much slower pace than in the last two years.
Classified ads, the category most affected by migration to the Internet, fell 38.1 percent last year. Since 2000, classified revenue is down by more than two-thirds.