There’s no doubt that, over the past four years, there’s been a steady decline in newspaper circulation. Lots of fingers have been pointed here and there, from blaming blogs to blaming Craigslist, to blaming the Internet as the true sources in the decline in newspaper subscriptions.
But one very small — yet perhaps highly significant — development may have affected newspaper circulation more than any of us ever thought: the October 2003 launch of the National Do Not Call Registry (NDNCR), which was mentioned very briefly in Editor and Publisher’s Mar. 11 exclusive on the the four-year plunge in newspaper circulation.
For most of the 20th century, telemarketing reigned as a reasonable way to sell newspaper and magazine subscriptions. Even though many of us hold negative notions about telemarketing, telemarketing may have been more effective and important than most of us realize. Our negative opinions may have caused us to overlook telemarketing’s contribution to increasing or sustaining subscription rates.
One rather unscientific example I can give of the effect of telemarketing on subscription rates is my own interaction with them. Before I put myself on the NDNCR, I received several calls monthly from newspaper telemarketers. These calls were for both my local papers (The Daily Hampshire Gazette and The Springfield Republican) as well as for The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Occasionally I took the home subscription offers for varying lengths of time from the Republican and the NYT. In my way I was helping to increase circulation, even for brief periods.
At the same time, I also received annoying automated calls from carpet cleaners, roofers, political candidates, tax preparation services, and harassing calls from a variety of agencies urging me to consolidate my student loans. These calls, not the newspaper subscription calls, were the impetus for me to get on the NDNCR — especially after being aggressively harassed and threatened by a student loan servicer whom I had refused.
I never really considered the newspaper calls “harassment” as I would occasionally want a printed paper rather than reading it on the Internet. Now there are no calls from harassers — but also no calls from newspaper telemarketers.
While we probably cannot lay all the blame for declining newspaper circulation on fallout from the NDNCR, it would be quite interesting to see some comparison figures on the success rates of telemarketing campaigns both pre and post NDNCR.
If the newspaper business is no longer able to reach potential customers through the tried-and-true method of telemarketing, perhaps there should be innovations in the marketing of journalism products as well as in the means of news dissemination. What are your ideas on this front? Please comment below.
