The slow, ugly death of the Post and Chronicle

In his 1842 classic "Morte d'Arthur," Alfred Lord Tennyson has the dying King Arthur say to his mourners:

The old order changeth, yielding place to new; and God fulfills himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Those Famous Last Words can now apply to two of the best-known and once widely read institutions in the United States, the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Along with almost all of U.S. daily newspapers, these strongly liberal – one of them a one-time toppler of a president of the United States – are beginning to lose, very seriously.

From its daily circulation in 1993, the Post has lost more than 194,000 subscribers or newsstand purchasers: a hair-raising drop from 832,000 to 638,000.

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The Post Company reported that operating income for the company's newspaper division – largely the Post – dropped by an incredible 50 percent from the same period last year, to $8.8 million.

The Post itself reported that this newspaper's total income is "about $63 million in total income for this year." By comparison, in 1989, three years before the Post began losing circulation operating income was $176 million.

So what is the Post doing about this precipitous loss in circulation and income?

Are you sitting down?

They are raising this price of each copy of the paper from 35 to 50 cents.

This despite the fact that a new daily newspaper competitor. the Examiner, is delivered at homes and available in street boxes – for free.

The Post in this story, "Post newsstand price going up to 50 cents," did not mention this free competing daily – or the fact that the Washington Times still retains its 25 cent price – as well as a smaller but hardly sinking number of avid readers, particularly on Capitol Hill.

At the same time the Post rate hike does not match that of its chief rival the New York Times. This also-liberal daily – which has also suffered huge losses in circulation – has upped its cost to $1.25.

This while the Post reported:

"Over the past six years, the Post, like most U.S. newspapers, has watched its circulation and advertising revenue decline, in part because readers and ad dollars are fleeing ink-on-paper newspapers for other media, principally the Internet."

At one time – in the 1970s – I was a syndicated columnist for 256 newspapers in 49 states and six foreign countries.

I am glad that I am now a talk radio host, as well as a White House correspondent and columnist for the Internet's WorldNetDaily and its 8 million viewers.

As a modest shareholder in the Washington Post and New York Times Companies (which I admit on-air with the quip: "I want to keep an eye on what the enemy is up to!"), I would suggest that both of these Old Big Media giants might, before they lose a quarter million more in circulation, consider some ideological emulation of the conservative New York Post – one of the very very few daily newspapers that recently reported an increase in circulation. (The New York Times has hired conservative writer William Kristol.)

The San Francisco Chronicle, for whom I worked as reporter and columnist from 1966 to 1970, was sold to Hearst newspapers in 2000 – for $660 million.

After less than eight years under the editorship of Phil Bronstein, the New York Times reported the following:

"Hearst officials say the Chronicle loses more than $1 million a week."

Think about that.

One million dollars lost every week! That means more than $142,000 a day they lose – which means they lose more than $5,000 an hour.

The Chronicle's weekday circulation has plummeted from 513,000 in 2003 to 365,000 last year – a decline of nearly 30 percent, reports the Times, as readers and advertisers have shifted to the Internet.

And what is happening to editor Bronstein who presided over this financial circulation cataclysm?

He was quoted as saying: "The kinds of crises that have gone on here nonstop in that time eventually cause me to turn around and say, 'What else do I want to be doing?'"

So what else is it?

"He will become editor at large for Hearst's newspaper division, working on projects like investigations and the expansion of websites."

How this man can do any better with the Hearst newspaper division than with the Chronicle must be a looming question for the "many high ranking editors" whose jobs perished before Bronstein was promoted.

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