Brown & Sons Inc., a Baltimore brokerage, say they don't expect a recovery until 1993, more than twice the percentage who were that pessimistic last summer. One-third of the newspaper executives surveyed recently by Alex. Classified advertising, which depends heavily on real estate and employment, has also taken a sharp tumble. Moreover, many of the department stores whose ads helped fuel an industry boom during the 1980s are bankrupt or heavily in debt. Forced by sinking profits and depressed revenue to charge more at the newsstand, media companies may be driving away readers they can ill afford to lose. The 1990-91 recession has added to the pressures. "If we don't attract the younger reader and all the old readers die, we're out of business," said William Dean Singleton, whose newspaper holdings include the Houston Post, which saw its circulation drop to 300,000 from 321,000. Newspapers have been badly hurt by competition from cable television, VCRs, computers, niche magazines and other forms of entertainment, and they have fared poorly among younger readers who see a daily paper as having little relevance to their lives. The new numbers are one more piece of bad news for an industry that has seen the percentage of households that subscribe to newspapers decline for the past 30 years. Some also said they were trying to limit their circulation area and concentrate on their home base to hold down newsprint and distribution costs. Publishers and editors largely blamed the erosion on the fact that dozens of papers have raised their prices. At some papers, the lost sales topped 50,000. 30 compared with the same period last year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, an independent company based in Schaumburg, Ill., that tracks the figures. Two-thirds of the top-selling newspapers lost circulation during the six-month period that ended Sept. The result is that circulation is heading in one direction: down. Mired in the second year of a recession that has cut deeply into advertising, publishers have raised newsstand prices, curtailed discount subscriptions and lopped off delivery routes to cut costs. This year, however, the industry seems headed for a long winter of discontent.
The Christmas season is traditionally a time of cheer for the nation's newspapers as holiday advertising fattens the corporate coffers.
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