Blogosphere

Just what does the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post (and a number of other liberal rags) expect will happen when they constantly filter the news and blatantly lie about current events? Thanks to a few conservative outlets, Fox News Channel in particular and the bloggers, newspapers are being exposed for their bias and are in a slump. We believe that network televised news like CBS, ABC and NBC will follow suit unless they get the bias out of their reporting. MSNBC, CNN and other left-slanted cable outlets already dwell in the ratings cellar.

From Dow Jones News:

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–The nation’s newspaper companies are expected to end 2005 on a weak note as the industry grapples with a persistent advertising malaise and declining circulation.

Newspapers will see a median drop in profit of about 10.9% from a year ago, according to a forecast from Goldman Sachs. That would mark the third consecutive quarter of earnings declines, with a slump of 10.6% in the third quarter and 3.2% in the second quarter, Goldman said.

Newspaper companies began reporting their latest quarterly financial results on Wednesday with Lee Enterprises Inc. (LEE), which posted a 16% drop in its fiscal first-quarter earnings, hurt by costs associated with its June acquisition of Pulitzer Inc. Other newspaper companies will start reporting their quarterly results next week.

Newspaper ad revenue will probably gain a scant 1% to 2% in the fourth quarter, its weakest performance of the year, said Peter Appert, who follows the publishing industry for Goldman.

“It’s pretty much the same variables that we’ve seen all year: softness in the retail ad category and very disappointing auto ad trends,” Appert said. “National has been a mixed bag.” Help-wanted and real-estate advertising have seen some strength, but not enough to offset the weakness elsewhere, he added.

Circulation, which accounts for roughly 20% to 25% of industry revenue and is an important metric for setting ad rates, also is expected to drag on results.

Circulation revenue has been “declining hard,” said Fred Searby, publishing analyst at J.P. Morgan.

Part of the drop is because many publishers have been cleaning up their circulation practices in the wake of scandals involving falsified figures at a handful of papers, which have resulted in steeper than usual declines in reported circulation figures across the industry.

“That’s a one-off hit,” Searby said. But the trends in circulation “are bad anyway,” amid competition from the Internet and 24-hour news channels, he added.