>Newspaper circulation is actually more than I expected...all this bitching and moaning about how newspapers are dying, and they only lost 10%. That is enough,

>Newspaper circulation is actually more than I expected...all this bitching and moaning about how newspapers are dying, and they only lost 10%. That is enough, though. Businesses don't just care about sales, they also care about net profit. The ratio of the latter to the former is profit margin, and indicates how what percent revenue needs to fall in order for a company to go into the red. A small change in sales can result in a large change in profit margin, depending on the costs involved in running the business. The NYT ran a 3.4% profit margin in 2007, on revenues of $3.1bn. A small change in that revenue is all it takes to put them in the red. If they have lost 10% of their circulation, assuming advertisers become disinterested at a similar rate, that is more than a sufficient amount of pain. FWIW, this has borne out in Q3 2008. Profit margins at NYT are at -16.72% for Q3. Revenue was at $687.04, which is a 10% drop from the same quarter a year ago. Annualized revenue from Q3 is at $2.748bn, or a 14% drop from the prior year. Not counting the $160m "unusual" expense they took -- whatever that was from, that still around 10% drop in revenue, and a profit margin of right around 0%. I can't imagine Q4 will be any more rosy given the trajectory of their revenue. I suspect we'll see more cost cutting there in the coming month, which will likely result in a reduction of reporters and other staff. It would seem to follow that either a smaller paper, or less expensive (read: more fluffy) articles will result, which runs the risk of further reducing sales. Not a happy cycle. So yeah, it's enough. Source for figures: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYT http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYT