Virginian-Pilot and taxes
By Brian Kirwin | Monday, November 8th, 2010 | Catch-AllGuess what? Subscriptions to the Virginian-Pilot newspaper have dropped a whopping 4.6% in the past year.
Guess what? It’s blaming its freefall of subscribers on the fact that they raised prices 10%.
“Mark Quan, the Pilot’s circulation director, attributed the decline in part to a 10 percent increase in subscription rates”
Hmmm. Let’s see. Increased prices leads to less economic activity.
If only the Virginian-Pilot editorial board would understand the impact of raising taxes the way their circulation director understands the impact of price increases…
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The right wants to jeer him. The left wants to censor him. Moderates usually want both. Brian Kirwin is a political consultant and public relations strategist in Virginia Beach with a lightning-rod flair. Brian also serves on the VB Arts & Humanities Commission and frequently appears on Hampton Roads theatrical stages, if only to prove that all actors aren’t liberals. Kirwin’s columns stir up debate and hit the political scene with no punches pulled.
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23 Responses to "Virginian-Pilot and taxes"
Outstanding.
Actually, if you look at the rate that daily paper circulation has fallen in tandem with increasing prices of those papers, you might conclude that they have exactly that understanding.
Actually, Brian’s post is a real hoot. Remember, he is an actor, posing as a journalist, so not only does he not have a clue about running a business, but he certainly does not understand the newspaper business. Before he offers financial advise about running any business, perhaps he will at least pretend that he has the experience and the expertise to do so. At least we could then rate his performance.
Mike, you could be right, since the statement “increased prices leads to less economic activity” isn’t always true.
There are commodities on which a increase in price will have little or no effect on demand.
Unfortunately, newspapers are not one of them.
Barrett, I would choose to do business with Brian Kirwin over you anyday. After all, you call every Democrat you ever met a fiscal conservative. You’re a deluded limousine liberal leftie. Its shocking that anyone would ever do business with you.
People make choices when faced with higher prices for a good or service. Evidently, when faced with higher prices, 5% of the Pilot’s readers decided they’d rather use their money on something else.
You know, Barrett, Obama could fix all of this by having the government force every adult American to buy a newspaper each day and then hiring 30,000 IRS agents to ensure that they do. The government could even force what sections must be published and how many pages would be in each section.
Nah. On second thought, no one would ever do that. The government doesn’t have that kind of power and besides, that would be unconstitutional.
Wow, how could any rational person react to my post in that way? How did President Obama get included in my comment about Brian’s attempt to post a rational comment about something of which he knows nothing? Rational pragmatic people, as opposed to ideologues, focus on the issue; sorry Ron, you missed that.
It’s deeper than that, Mike. Know how many Pilot ad salesmen were calling me whining that no candidates were buying newspaper space?
They’ve totally priced themselves out of the market, made even worse by the fact that they reach fewer and fewer people.
Think their ad rates dropped this year? Noooooooooooooo.
Yes, that business is certainly in transition, but lest I start to do just what I ribbed you for doing, I know that Maurice Jones in one of the brightest publishers in the nation. If anyone can get this challenge right, it will be him.
Mike… the “challenge right” or the “price right”? If they can’t get there from here, maybe the VP should go up on Ebay for auction also, no reserve. I would be gracious enough to start the bidding at $1 and then sweat until someone out-bid me.
Maurice Jones is one of the brightest publishers in the nation? Says who? The front page of the paper – with all of the ridiculous graphics is unreadable, Jones’ paper just lost 5% of its readers, people revile the editorial page gobblogook and teenagers, the next wave of potential buyers, get more of their news from Comedy Central than they do from the local newspaper. It’s a dead business with a horrible business model. Maurice Jones had better go take a class on how to sell ice cream from a van or some other growth industry.
Well, you clearly think you know more that he does. So have at it; offer yourself as the savior of the business. Let us know how that goes.
Sigh, contest is over or delayed for now. However I will cede advantage to you. Went to outer banks with my business partner today to put up the for sale sign. Had possible buyers talking to us before we could even unlock the door and my partner decided that the place would end up selling within a couple of days and choked on selling. Ended up buying $600 worth of clothes at Gray’s.
What to Buy Before Cotton Prices Rise
http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/deals/what-to-buy-before-cotton-prices-rise/?cid=sm_pfspend_rss
Wonder if local farmers are thinking about growing some cotton next year.
Barrett, you miss The Answer’s point…the business model is dead. No one can turn around this sinking ship anymore than someone could save the buggy whip makers in 1900. The Pilot reprints AP, Politico and Wash Post stories far more than they write their own. Many if not most of their own stories are about who got raped, robbed or murdered. Nobody wants to wake up in the morning and read that crap. You said Maurice is one of the brightest publishers in the country. Where’s your evidence for this ridiculous statement?
Well if the price of cotton goes up maybe we can stop giving cotton farmers subsidies!
I recently heard the US Government has agreed to pay about $150 million every year to Brazilian cotton growers so that Brazil will drop their WTO (World Trade Organization) complaint about US government subsidies to US cotton farmers. Now we’re not only subsidizing our farmers, we’re subsidizing Brazil’s.
Isn’t that basic ECON 101? Higher cost equates to lower demand. I see it all the time. I could lower my prices and get more business. Actually, when we get too busy, I charge more so it’ll discourage people from pressing forward. When the demand goes up, your prices go up. When the demand goes down, your prices go down. It is actually practiced in the real world…
In addition, Newspapers have made themselves irrelevant; this is the reason for their decline. They provide news that’s totally irrelevant and out-of-touch with normal people. Their focus and articles actually hurt the community. Soon, their only customers will be their liberal base which is only 20%.
Talking about hypocrisy in subsidies. In September while having a Moratorium on the US, our Federal government provided $1 billion to Mexico to drill for oil in the Gulf? Last year, they’d provided Petrobras, a national-owned Venezuelan oil company, $2B to drill twice as deep as the BP horizon? We provide subsidies to other countries to drill for oil, and yet, we cannot. I only hope a few farmers get a few bucks because these liberals are making some pretty hypocritical and stupid decisions. GO BIG GOVERNMENT!
Dumb, just plain dumb.
“Circulation is down, but readership is up. ….He [Mark Quan] said the rate of decline slowed as the year went on partly because The Pilot emphasized subscriptions to a combination of print and digital replica versions of the newspaper….In terms of readership….The Pilot’s total since September 2009 rose 5.5 percent on weekdays – to 403,156 from 382,001 – and 4.4 percent on Sundays – to 513,200 from 491,804 – according to Scarborough Research……“The whole picture for us is that the audience for our journalism and our advertising is growing.”
Newspapers have two revenue streams, broken down this year (by FTC) as follows: 80% advertising (40% retail/ 32% classified/ 8% national) and 20% retail sales (17% newsstand/ 3% subscriptions). Seems silly to judge the Pilot’s health (or predict its demise) based based upon a drop in subscriptions?
Hands down, THE most ignorant post ever run on BD.
Jay D,
How much more ignorant is your comment that criticizes something I didn’t write.
“Seems silly to judge the Pilot’s health (or predict its demise) based based upon a drop in subscriptions?”.
I made NO judgment about the Pilot’s health.
I simply compared their own analysis of their price increases with their editorial opinion of tax increases.
In future, try not to be so ignorant when calling others ignorant.
stop giving cotton farmers subsidies!
Sure why not??
Close down the Department of Agriculture and fire everyone. I will go along with that too. Have family and friends that have collected money from subsidies. It is a “racket” Lets free the farmers and let them grow all the food and cotton they can..
Could use 80% of the savings to bring down debt and 20% to use on infrastructure.
Even willing to concede that perhaps in a year or three, might even discover that they had some useful programs. Fund those programs, sure.
Brian, I have no clue why you do it, but monthly ragging on the Pilot gets tiresome. Plus, you didn’t bother to run the whole quote … you describe 4.6% circulation decrease as “whopping” & “free fall” ….
At the end of the day, if readership is up and profits are steady, who cares how many newspapers are printed? It’s a dumb ‘story’ and a dumb ‘point’.
Jay, not used to monthly ragging?
Could’ve fooled me.
Brian – Figured you would hit that – your ‘story’ is still dumb.
You slay
Financial advice from the BOD member that contributed heavily to the failure of SPSA and left the citizens holding the bag of stinking rotting trash. Priceless
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