When Newspapers Become Monopolies

Why are so many newspapers letting their circulations wane? The New York Times looks into it today, but misses what seems like a major part of the answer: because fewer and fewer papers have to worry about getting one-upped by the competition.

Just look at the the headline of this 2003 story: "Readership Usually Drops in One-Newspaper Towns." Well, of course it does.

But the closest the Times comes to citing the dwindling number of two-paper markets as an explanation is mentioning the circulation war between the New York Post and Daily News. You can be sure Rupert Murdoch would stop pouring millions into growing the Post's readership the second the News went belly-up. Instead, he's pouring fresh millions into trying to overtake the News on Sunday with a new glossy magazine and books section.

Obviously there are other factors at play. Two shrinking papers mentioned in the Times article, the Los Angeles Times and Dallas Morning News, both have in-town rivals, albeit much smaller ones. But if the Times had taken into account the disappearance of competition from many markets, it might not have been so surprised by the laissez-faire attitude of many papers towards consumer marketing.