Math for journalists

Here's what it takes to pay for a typical news reporter's salary of $40,000 a year plus benefits ($50,000 total, figuring benefits packages including health insurance are 25 percent of salary).

➤417 subscribers each paying $10 a month.*

Or
➤20 full-page newspaper ads @ $2,500.*

Or
➤50 30-second spots on local TV news @ $1,000.*

Or
➤2.5 million views of online ads @ $20 cpm.*

News organizations relying on people to pay for news are going to need bigger boatloads of subscribers.

*Prices vary by market/publication size/other factors but these are typical of small and midsize operations.

For example, a full-page, midweek black-and-white newspaper ad at open rate (at time of this post):

• USA Today: $125,600
• WSJ: $277,200
• Milwaukee J-S: $23,688
• Bozeman Daily Chronicle: $2,587 

Suzanne Vega says she still reads paper newspapers

When Toms Diner came on the radio this morning, we wondered on Twitter if Suzanne Vega's lyrics about "I open up the paper..." would be different if she wrote the song today. Apparently not!

She tweeted this answer:
"yes I still read paper newspapers"

When asked later by media blogger Jim Romenesko which ones, she replied "Nytimes mostly." 

"Tom's Diner," first written in 1981, was a Billboard hot single, with DNA, in 1991.

BTW, Vega has a new album out: "Tales From the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles"
Details here: http://www.suzannevega.com/

Tom's Diner lyrics excerpt:

... I open

Up the paper
There's a story
Of an actor

Who had died

While he was drinking
It was no one
I had heard of

And I'm turning

To the horoscope
And looking
For the funnies ...