The Death of the LWM Redux

Newspapers will be going the way of the dodo if this keeps up:

In a surprising role reversal, Hollywood is about to deliver bad news to the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times and, to a lesser extent, other big-city dailies around the country. Every major movie studio is rethinking its reliably humongous display ad buys in those papers because those newsosaur readers are, to quote one mogul, “older and elitist” compared to younger, low-brow filmgoers — so it makes no sense to waste the dough.

Wait, it gets worse: I’ve learned that at least two Hollywood movie studios have decided to drastically cut their newspaper display ads as soon as possible.

This news couldn’t occur at a worse time for the LAT and NYT, which both receive the lion’s share of those very showy $100,000-plus full-page after full-page movie display ads. At Spring Street, editor Dean Baquet just moved into the power office on Monday, and publisher Jeff Johnson only took over his hot seat on June 1. In Times Square, culture editor Sam Sifton has barely put his stamp on the section since assuming the post in May. Now comes a body blow to their beefed-up cultural coverage.

In response to the recent turf war initiated by his former employer and current national competitor, the NYT, Baquet, a proponent of moving Hollywood coverage onto Page One, has made it his professional mantra to “own” the beat. The NYT over the past year has underwritten a huge increase in editorial employees and space in its culture sections. But without those big movie ads to foot the bill, both newspapers may not be able to justify the increased pages and bigger overhead they’re devoting to arts and entertainment coverage.

The circulation scandals combined with declining readership thanks to the arrogance and partisanship of monopoly newspapers is adding up to a perfect storm for the industry.

Look for them to start sucking up to bloggers. It may be their only hope of survival.