According to a story in the New York Times today (in which the NYT tries very hard to suppress its glee), the Post's circulation has fallen by 30% in less than three years, to just a hair over half a million; and its financial losses were around $70 million last year, making the paper an expensive habit even by Rupert Murdoch's standards. And the fact that Rupert's adding local reporting to the WSJ makes Post reporters (reasonably) nervous they're falling out of favor.

We must not let this perpetually money-losing right-wing tabloid fall from grace! New York would be such a boring newspaper city without a loud, drunk voice of opposition. A few helpful suggestions:

• Andrea Peyser's sexxxy, but is she sexxxy enough? Millions of people in New York have sex every day without being mentioned in Andrea Peyser's column. Work on that.
• Col Allan is drunk, but is he drunk enough? Secretly rig the water fountains to emit gin, if you haven't done so already.
• Sean Delonas is racist, but is he racist enough? Racist cartoons are all well and good, but try upping Sean's visibility by getting him out there on the street, among the people, beating up minorities, then quick-sketching it on a blog. After he's all done promoting his children's book.

Peter Kafka pulls out the actual sale price of BusinessWeek: $9.3 million, before taxes. That's more than earlier reports of $2-5 million, but less than what McGraw-Hill would have liked to get for the magazine ($999 million).


The entire newspaper industry did terribly in the latest circulation report, but who did the worst? Well, the SF Chronicle's circulation dropped 26%; the Miami Herald dropped 23%; and the Newark Star-Ledger dropped 22%. Coincidentally, those are the same three papers that lead the "Papers that are toast" list. [Oh and look at this!]


Gene Weingarten cracks jokes about his newspaper's stupid pundit contest. Most of you probably think you're "too cool" to admit that old Gene Weingarten, plain old newspaper "humor columnist," is a funny writer, don't you? Well you're not. Just admit it.


Conde Nast has hired Julie Raimondi as the new editor in chief of Brides.com, one of the few jobs that still exists over there, at Conde Nast.

Easily caricatured Nevada Sen. Harry Reid is in a "flap" because he got mad at the hometown Las Vegas Review Journal and then he went to some luncheon and saw the paper's advertising director—"a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of advertisers"—and Harry Reid told the guy he hopes his paper goes out of business because it totally sucks, and also does not like Harry Reid. This prompted an indignant editorial, which is about the extent of the "flap" at this point, due to the rapidly waning influence of newspapers. "Flaps" aren't what they used to be.


Some joker sent a fake bomb to the Naples Daily News, but when bomb techs finally opened it all it did was play "Call Me" by Blondie. That's kind of a good one, let's get real.


Cami McCormick, a CBS News correspondent, was injured by an IED while on assignment with a US Army unit in Afghanistan. She's now being treated, but no specifics are available on her condition. Get well soon Cami.


Magazine circulation news! Of the bad sort. Overall newsstand sales were down about 12% in the first half. And women's magazines did the worst—Ladies Home Journal, for example, fell 46%. No extra pennies in the supermarket checkout line, MYSTERY SOLVED.

Think this will only work on gullible old ladies? Think again. We heard from a would-be-former News subscriber who is gainfully employed at a public relations agency.

That's right: even flacks, who take pride in bending newspapermen to their will, have trouble wriggling out of their News subscriptions.

Our tipster has tried calling, twice, but was put on hold for more than half an hour each time. She tried letters, of a sort, and even emailing the publisher and top editors. No dice. See her account below.

Perhaps the source of her headaches is obvious: the News is owned by Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group. Singleton, presently chairman of the Associated Press, just gave a speech saying he's "mad as hell" at those who would "walk off with our work" online. With that much anger at the top of the organization, maybe it was inevitable some non-customers in the offline world would get burned, as well.

See, over the weekend the FAS-FAX circulation numbers came out and basically everyone lost. Circ was down more than 5% for the LAT. Meanwhile, on our coast, the Newark Star-Ledger is slashing 40% of its newsroom staff. They are trying to sell the paper but no one wants it.

It is basically a bad time to enjoy getting a paycheck. Sadly, the Newspaper Industry is not too big to fail.

The company touts its 3.9% quarterly increase in circulation revenue, about $8.4 million, but this is probably a pretty soft number. This quarter past, the paper raised the newsstand price of the Sunday paper in the greater metro area, and increased home delivery prices, and raised prices for the daily paper nationwide at the newsstand.

If they were able to hold their readers, we think that circulation revenue would have been much, much higher. As we've seen at the tabloids in New York, newsstand price can cause a serious drop in sales.

Now, the paper knows a lot more about its own finances than we do—if we're misconstruing things, we're happy to hear from folks who are in-the-know.

But it seems to us that the Times seems to be seriously missing the mark in their "ongoing program of focusing costs and efficiency," in the words of spokesperson Catherine Mathis. If operating costs are down only 1.5%, they're either spending a boatload of money on something they're not telling anyone about (office greenery? Kidding!) or they're just plain undisciplined, fiscally speaking.

Some analysts are making much of the company's earnings going from 6 to 10 cents a share, but their total earnings so far this year are still 40% less than last year. Either way, that cash isn't going back into the shareholders' pockets.

The company claimed total quarterly revenues of $754.4 million and total operating costs of $726.3 million. That leaves a profit of $28.1 million for the quarter. That's pocket change. (One major investor already bolted for the aisles.)

Now sure, we'd take it! It's not pocket change to us, but to a $3.3 billion-dollar publicly-traded company? That's just the cost of one apartment at 770 Park Avenue. And not even a particularly good one.

• Oprah Winfrey endorses Barack Obama. Hell, if she can move copies of The Road she can probably sell anything. [NYT]
  
• Both the News and the Post have padded their circulation numbers. [AdAge]
  
• Jeff Bewkes, likely successor to Time Warner's Dick Parsons, sees a bright future for HBO, noting popularity of OnDemand. [B&C]
  
• HBO CEO Chris Albrecht on demand with Las Vegas PD after domestic violence incident following DeLaHoya/Mayweather bout. [LAT]
  

• At the Conrad Black trial, the government's star witness—Black's former right-hand man—prepares to testify. [NYP
  
• CNet reporters who were spied on by Hewlett-Packard have filed suit against the company. [NYT]
  
• Thomson's bid for Reuters raises regulatory concerns. [FT]
  
• Media buyers to mags: Give us issue-by-issue circulation guarantees or we take a hike. [AdAge]
  
• Vibe: Everybody's leaving. [WWD]
  
• Boston free daily starts printing material from bloggers. You get what you pay for, etc. [NYT]
  
• Conde Nast CEO Chuck Townsend: leisurewear model. [WWD]
  
• This newspaper industry: Giving it away for free is a bad idea. Except that people are starting to realize the value of top-tier brands. (And Tribune.) "There's a gold rush on." [Boston Globe]
  
• Simon Dumenco gets letters, a few of which don't even refer to him as a muppet! [AdAge]