U.S. Q2 newspaper sales: "Less bad but not good"

Posted by Erina Lin on August 2, 2010 at 1:31 PM

Ad sales for most newspaper publishers in U.S. were less bad in the second quarter of this year, compared to the previous quarter.

However, "less bad is not the same as good," according to the Business Insider, which pointed out that the outlook for the rest of the year is "decidedly murky".

According to the financial results reported to date by the publicly traded publishing companies, the average sales for the industry in the second quarter will drop about 7 percent to 8 percent, making it the least decline since the fall of 2007, Reflections of a Newsosaur reported.

In addition, this period will be an improvement from the 9.7 percent industry decrease in print and online sales in the first quarter, and from the 29 percent sales plunge year-over-year.

Among the seven publicly traded U.S. publishers who have already released second-quarter results, six of them reported better quarterly sales except for A.H. Belo. The strongest performer was the New York Times.

Even though the second-quarter performances seem encouraging, "it is not clear that the trend will continue, given an apparent slowdown in the recovery of the economy," according to Reflections of a Newsosaur.

Based on the data released Friday by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the gross domestic product dropped to 2.4 percent in the second quarter, from 3.7 percent in the previous period and 5 percent in the last quarter of 2009.

Some economists pointed out "the second-quarter decline in the measure of the nation's production of goods and services as evidence that the economy could be headed toward a double-dip recession," Reflections of a Newsosaur reported.