PEJ: Newspapers are losing $7 in print revenue for every $1 in digital gained

poynter reporting: Revenue is just one of the problems facing American newspapers, says a new Project for Excellence in Journalism study. The culture at newspapers, and not just on the editorial side, is as much an impediment to publications finding their way out of the mess they’re in.
The study, called “The Search for a New Business Model,” looked at “highly granular” data from 38 newspapers of various sizes. The data was verified through site visits and interviews, then anonymized and shared with executives at seven more companies. The frankness of the newspaper executives is striking.
On revenue:
• Digital revenue continues to stymie executives. The papers brought in about $1 in digital advertising for every $11 in print. To get to the mythical “crossover point,” at which digital dollars would overtake print, one executive said “was reducing the annual print losses to somewhere between 6% and 8% and growing the digital revenue at a minimum of 30% annually. Another said he thought the rate of digital growth would need to be close to 50%.” One executive fretted about how much time they spent on digital versus what it brought in: “We spend 90% of our time talking about 10% of our revenue,” he told PEJ.
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• Entrenched attitudes aren’t just for editorial. Executives predicted thinner papers: One predicted a future of “probably one-third original content, one-third blogger opinions and one-third community journalism [generated from] outside.” But navigating a transition to a news product like that seems like a relative breeze compared to finding someone who can sell it.
>>”One executive said the biggest difficulty facing his company is ‘execution,’ particularly by the sales staff. ‘This is where the game will be won,’ he explained, ‘in the streets with small and mid-sized businesses.’ Another executive said his sales people frankly did not know how to sell all the products they were offering.
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/165288/pej-newspaper-are-losing-7-in-print-revenue-for-every-1-in-digital-gained/