Web traffic for newspapers keeps growing, but not fast enough for Washington Post staffers, who on Wednesday learned there would be yet another round of voluntary buyouts at the paper.
The buyouts - up to 48 news staffers at the Post, according to the paper's ombudsman - are the latest in a new round of cuts at major newspapers as online traffic grows and overall unemployment numbers fall nationwide.
The average number of daily visitors to Washington Post's site jumped by more than 3 million, or nearly 15 percent, during the last quarter of 2011, according to a study released last week by the Newspaper Association of America.
The number of unique visitors over that period increased nearly 6 percent, while the total minutes visitors spent on the site rose by 14 percent.
But all those eyeballs are not translating into real money, or at least not at enough of a clip to cushion circulation losses and declining print advertising revenue.
Also read: L.A. Times Rocked by More Turmoil: Top Editor Quits With Cuts Looming
Newspaper ad revenue in 2011 reached its lowest point since 1984, bottoming out at $24 billion. That figure is half of what the industry attracted at its height in 2004.
“The desperation continues,” Alan Mutter, a former top editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and an adjunct faculty member at the Berkeley School of Journalism, told TheWrap. “They thought [2011] would be a reasonably stable year and it wasn’t because even though advertising has recovered in magazines, radio and television, it never came back for newspapers.”
In the case of the Washington Post, the newspaper has not released earnings for the fourth quarter of last year, but its most recent public filing showed a paper still struggling with the migration of readers from print to web.
Print advertising revenue at the Post fell 20 percent to $57.6 million, according to its November earnings report.
Overall, the paper's print advertising revenue plunged 13 percent for the first nine months of last year.
Also read: Washington Post Editor Jumps Back to Wall Street Journal
Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli positioned the buyouts as a necessary step toward making the paper "more efficient, agile and competitive." It marks the paper's fifth round of buyouts since 2004, according to Poynter.
In an email to staff, Brauchli said the paper's coverage would not be compromised, thanks in no small part to its success in growing the Post's digital operations.
"Our objective is a limited staff reduction that won’t affect the quality, ambition or authority of our journalism. We believe this is possible, given the changes in how we work and the great successes we have had building our digital readership lately," Brauchli wrote.
Not everyone shared Brauchli's optimism.
In the American Journal Review, the publication's editor Rem Rieder wrote, "Resources matter. You can't do more with less, no matter how often you say you can and will."
