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AltNewsweeklies - State of Business and Mobile Offerings
More from my whitepaper that is currently in review:
State of AltWeekly Business
AltWeeklies, like other newspapers, haven’t been spared from the decline in readership. According to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN), the combined circulation of weekly papers dropped by nearly 5% in 2008 and 7% in 2009#. Using the current AAN member directory data shows a total decline of over 800,000 in circulation over the past two years:
While paper circulation has fallen, web readership is making up the difference. Current unique visitors as September 2010 are 7,596,763#. In some cases, webs site visitors exceeds paper readership. While this 86% difference between the paper and web readership is significant, the paper readership still is a viable audience in the near future (2-3 years) that can spark innovation.
Current Mobile solutions
Only 18% of AAN member papers have mobile web sites in addition to their desktop web site. Most of these sites are enabled through the use of the Foundation Content Management System. Foundation will create and deploy a directory of venues and events from the AltWeeklies current listings. While it’s easier having the content management system produce the mobile web site automatically, current designs don’t offer a significant additional value to the mobile users versus currently available mobile applications (Example: Yelp):
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Foundation CMS
Yelp
Very few of the AltWeekly mobile sites offer article content. Those sites that do enable readers to share articles using social networks. No mobile sites allow readers to comment on articles.
