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Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Carrier Crunch

Classified advertising just might be illustrative of the problems facing the News-Sentinel as an afternoon daily.

The Journal-Gazette and News-Sentinel ran side-by-side ads in the classified for route carriers. The position of the ads invited, well... a side-by-side comparison of the relative lucrativeness of the routes.

Potential monthly profit for the first route listed for the News-Sentinel is all of $60. The first route listed for the Journal-Gazette shows a potential bi-weekly profit is $400. The disparity continues down the page.

We know that the J-G appears to be advertising for motor routes only while the News-Sentinel list appears to be a mix of foot or bicycle routes along with motor routes. Knowing that, however, wouldn't seem to change the fact that some of these routes aren't very densely packed with N-S subscribers.

This brought back some reminiscing by your correspondent of his teen-age years as a substitute N-S carrier for a friend's route.

The News-Sentinel does have one thing going for it, though. At least its relatively smaller profit doesn't have to serve as an inducement to get out of bed early in the morning.


Images from the January 2, 2006 News-Sentinel. Advertisements have been slightly truncated to allow for a larger illustration.

# posted by Mitch : 11:59 AM
Comments:
Mitch,

You forget also that the JG is a seven day newspaper and the carriers make a larger amount off of the Sunday Paper.

The News-Sentinel still targets kids- so the routes are kept small.

SO there is no doubt that the News is in trouble- but this time you are a bit off base.

Kevin
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 1:28 PM
 
Yes, but the N-S just seems to keep getting thinner and thinner, the Tuesday paper, which, granted, Tuesday papers have always been thin within my memory, is almost nothing some weeks. I hate to see it happening but I fear for a short future for them.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 12:30 AM
 
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