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Newspapers Feeling The Brunt Of Housing Slump

from the crack-up dept

Thu, Jul 19th 2007 9:16pm — Joseph Weisenthal

Real estate professionals aren't the ones seeing the way the internet is affecting their industry. Major newspapers, which already have enough problems to deal with, are taking a major hit from lower real estate listings (via Paul Kedrosky), many of which have shifted to the internet. There are two things going on here. There's the general shift of all advertising away from newspapers and there's the housing slump, which has taken its own toll on listing volume. At this point, the newspapers are trying to make the case that the slow business is mainly the result of the housing slump, rather than anything more fundamental. Fair enough, but then you have to look at newspaper earnings during the housing boom, which were already quite poor, and adjust them down even further, in order to get an accurate picture of their past performance.

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Filed Under: advertising, housing, newspapers

9 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jul 2007 @ 9:25pm

Considering that for the price you pay for a housing ad in local paper you can put that same ad on a website and get much more circulation is this really a surprise?
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dgeezer, 20 Jul 2007 @ 12:46am

Re:
I agree wholeheartedly. I am a small time (less than 20 tenants) landlord. My local paper charges me $145.00 for a 7 day apartment for rent ad. I can advertise on Craigslist for free. I get at least as many calls from Craigslist, but most of the calls are from people that are interested in looking at the listing since I can include so much more useful info in the online ad.
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My2Cents, 20 Jul 2007 @ 5:49am

Whats new anyway
The phrase "news" is rapidly becoming a misnomer. What the newspaper prints as "news" happened often hours ago if not the day before and reported on the tv or internet the instant it happened and has since been passed passed over for more current events. "History report" would be a much more appropriate title for what we now call the "news paper". We no longer light our homes with candles or pump our own water. These newspsper people are just riding a horse on the freeway. The old technology will die of neglect soon.
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Brian, 20 Jul 2007 @ 6:46am

Re: Whats new anyway
Everyone should re-read My2Cents comment and let it sink in what interesting times we are fortunate to be living in. It wasn't 75 years ago that a simple letter to England could take a month to arrive and then another month for a reply - and that's if the ships didn't sink (and if they did on either leg, you'd have no way of knowing). In the past, wars have been started (Lusitania) and prolongued (Battle of New Orleans) because of such lag.
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paperboy, 20 Jul 2007 @ 7:19am

little guy
I think they need to take a step back and think about how many kids are now unemployeed because of the shift to internet news.
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That Guy, 20 Jul 2007 @ 7:26am

Why I still get the sunday paper
I'll be honest the ONLY reason I get my Sunday paper is for the local ads. Yes, I know that I can go to Target.com, Bestbuy.com, etc. etc. to see what's on sale that week, but frankly its easier to just have them all sitting in front of me.

I think something that's overlooked in this conversation is what appears to me to be a growth in independent weekly papers and free niche local magazines. These publications exist almost solely as vehicles for local advertisers, and community events.

I actually think the weekly papers and magazines will be the final blow that knocks newspapers out, and not the internet.
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Geoip, 20 Jul 2007 @ 7:30am

How
I agree a bit with My2Cents. However, I think that newspapers have the ability to do more than straight news. They have space for analysis and information that needs digested. We can listen to a news talk show say on CNN and get a view point of the news or a debate on the news but it's easy to gloss over facts on those shows. What papers could do is offer an honest debate (which could be hard for some papers). If the spent time to provide graphs and analysis of news items along side the news they could have a good formula. Right now they offer what their readers already know. I would imagine they'd do better with a Newsweek or Time style format, analysis and news mixed together. If you are going to be late on the news you might as well do it for a reason.
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Joseph, 20 Jul 2007 @ 8:49am

huh?
Was anyone else confused with the logic presented in this article? Yes, we are in a housing slump, but the slump has resulted in record levels of housing inventory. I would think that if anything, there are more houses on the market that need advertising. How does more houses = less listings available for newspapers?
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andy, 20 Jul 2007 @ 1:34pm

another effect...
another effect of the housing slump is that construction is slower... you have fewer housing developments/developers popping up and buying ads in newspapers.

housing developments usually have intense marketing budgets, so when those dry up it hits papers pretty hard.
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