The news has been so depressing lately for journalism (and, yes, the decline of print journalism is hurtful for all journalism) that I've been ignoring the drip, drip, drip bad news stories. But MediaPost (online, of course) does a nice job of wrapping up this week's bad news here. There are some dramatic charts showing the decline since 2000 -- with the cut in employees being constant followed by the decline in stock price. Could they be tied together with a decline in quality hurting the bottom line? Yes, advertising is fleeing, but I would argue that some of the decline in advertising is because print media isn't aggressively seeking it out. I hear, anecdotally, that one of the problems at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is that they've cut so many advertising salespeople that they don't have enough bodies to service existing customers, much less drum up new business. I don't think that's any different than the rest of the industry.
By the way, I'd suggest a third chart just to compare: How has CEO compensation fared over this period? Do you think it declined with the number of employees and stock price? I'd do it myself, but the end of the semester rush is hitting.
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