E.W. Scripps profit falls 88% in quarter

E.W. Scripps released first quarter results Monday which showed an 88% year-over-year decline in its newspaper division profits, according to Editor & Publisher.
Like most other publishers in the country, Scripps' overall newspaper ad revenue was down significantly. However, the company also posted a loss in online ad revenue:

Online revenue plummeted 26.5% to $7.3 million because of the weakness in print classified advertising, which accounts for 55% of online advertising revenue. Stripping out online ads tied to print, Scripps reported that online revenue from "pure-play" advertisers was up 30% to $3.4 million.

Much of the operating losses the company reported were one-time losses such as those related to the closing of the Rocky Mountain News. However, president and CEO Richard Boehne said that the second quarter looks like it will have results similar to those of the first quarter.
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Circulation decline speeding up

Figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that newspaper circulation for the six months ending March 31 fell 7.1 percent, according to The New York Times.
That's an increase from the 4.3 percent and 3.6 percent drops over the previous two six-month periods.

Of the top 25 newspapers in the United States, all posted declines in circulation except for The Wall Street Journal, which eked out a 0.6 percent gain, according to figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. For the others, the declines ranged from 20.6 percent for The New York Post, to a slight 0.4 percent drop for The Chicago Sun-Times.

The Audit Bureau also showed, however, that the number of unique visitors to newspaper websites is still increasing.
The sites combined to draw 73 million unique visitors per month in the first quarter of 2009, a year-over-year increase of 10.5 percent.
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Average time spent declines for many in March

Among the top 30 newspaper websites in terms of unique monthly visitors, most saw a decline in the average time spent per visitor in March, according to Editor & Publisher.

The average time spent per person at the NYTimes.com dropped by six minutes in March 2009 compared to the same period a year ago. The NYTimes.com has some company: The Wall Street Journal lost more than five minutes March 2009. So did Politico.
In fact, just over half of the top 30 newspaper Web sites (ranked by uniques) experienced declines in the average time spent per person.

Some sites enjoyed large gains, however. Both The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Newsday improved by more than eight minutes.
The New York Times was overtaken in first place by the Star Tribune, which lost about thirty seconds to finish with an average of over 32 minutes.
While the news can be interpreted negatively from an advertising standpoint, it can also be a sign that the number of unique users is increasing, which is the case for some papers on the list.
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McClatchy hit hard by 1st quarter ad revenue

McClatchy Co. announced its first quarter results Thursday, and reported a drop in advertising revenue of just under 30 percent, according to Editor & Publisher.
Overall losses also exceeded analysts' expectations:

McClatchy reported a loss of $37.7 million, or 45 cents a share, from a loss of $993,000, or 1 cent a share, in the first quarter of 2008. Adjusted for certain items, such as severance payments from a wave of layoffs, the loss from continuing operations was $22.9 million, or 28 cents a share. The consensus of analysts had been for an 11-cent loss per share.

In more positive news, print revenue increased slightly, and when employment advertising is excluded, digital advertising was up 28.7 percent.
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