A new study has found that publishers who invest more in their newsrooms actually create more profitable newspapers. The report, issued by the University of Missouri, questions the accepted wisdom that publishers must cut jobs to save costs.
“The authors of the University of Missouri-Columbia study, which was based on 10 years of financial data, said news quality affects profit more than spending on circulation, advertising and other parts of the business,” writes Robert MacMillan from Reuters. Yet, for the time being, publishers continue to cut. “U.S. publishers have been eliminating jobs at many newspapers as part of larger efforts to trim expenses amid falling profit margins and, in the case of publicly traded chains, declining stock prices. According to job outplacement tracking firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of planned job cuts in the U.S. media sector surged 88 percent to 17,809 last year.”
