Moroney: Business development can beat papers' losses

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Newspapers have a big number, small number problem, says Jim Moroney.

Moroney, CEO and publisher of The Dallas Morning News, says the big number problem is print advertising – let's say 85 percent of overall revenue declining at 5 percent a year. The small number is digital advertising revenue. Even if a publisher has achieved a comparatively strong 15 percent of overall revenue in the segment growing at 10 percent a year, it will take 10 years for digital ad growth to exceed print revenue decline.

"It's hard to outrun that when you're starting with a big piece of your revenue declining in that way," Moroney told publishers at the Key Executives Mega-Conference, a joint meeting of the Inland Press Association, Southern Newspaper Publishers Association and Local Media Association, on Wednesday.

Even though what's coming out of their businesses is faster than what's going in, publishers need to stop cutting expenses, and a big part of that is sticking to their seven-day print schedules, he stresses.

Read more at NetNewsCheck

Mega-Conference, Dallas, Moroney, Calkins, Reese
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