Cascadia's newspapers are reporting sharp drops in circulation and the Seattle papers claim they can't survive unless one disappears. But maybe the newspaper business isn't so bad after all.
The circulation of Vancouver's two dailies fell to below the level they had in 1957, when they began a profit-sharing partnership, despite at least tripling of the area's population, according to The Tyee. But the company that owns both papers -- and TV stations and newspapers in Victoria and across the Canadian west -- generates profit margins of more than 30 percent on some of its papers.
Meanwhile circulation at The Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer is dropping, partly by choice. The idea is to put the papers in front of readers who advertisers want to reach; once statewide papers are now mostly found in three counties. Still, each claims it can't go on with the competition. On Monday an independent group asked a court to let it in on negotiations that would probably close one of the papers.