Moody’s deflates any print optimism in USA as online paywalls grow

In a week when there has been some splashes of cautious optimism for the resurgence of global ad revenue in Zenith and Merrill Lynch forecasts, the US print newspaper industry was dealt another hammer blow from forecasters on Monday. Moody’s Investors Service has revised its outlook for print media from “stable” to “negative” and, according to research, revenues are predicted to drop around 5-6% this year. This decrease shows a distinct slowing down from 2009’s figures which suffered a hefty decline of over 20%.

Even though the decline may be slowing, Moody’s suggest that the end of print media as a major advertising force is not too far away. Moody’s VP John Puchalla said in a statement. “Even in a slowly growing economy, the erosion of newspapers’ readership share and pricing power continues unabated as readers embrace free and low-cost content on the web and mobile devices.”

This comes at a nervous time for print media, with the publisher of the New York Times recently acknowledging that the newspaper will stop printing – eventually. “We will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD,” Arthur Sulzberger told an audience at a recent London media conference.

In the UK, it has been widely reported that according to Comscore data, the Times newspaper has lost 1.2 million readers in the first 3 months since it started charging for online content. Despite these figures, the Times is reported to be encouraged by the number of people who had signed up for the paid online model and Dominic Carter, trading director, told delegates at MediaTel Group’s Future of National Newspapers event figures would be released in good time.

Rupert Murdoch is further embracing the non-print newspaper route, to the extent that he is launching a digital only newspaper in the US, aimed squarely at the iPad and mobile phone market.

Yesterday it was reported by Media Week that the Trinity Mirror will be finalising later this year which “unique, high value content” it will put behind a paywall.