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Maybe we still haven’t bottomed out in sales

Well, Chicken Little, the sky could indeed be falling. So reports Alan Mutter in his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog. Mutter is reporting NAA figures that actually passed along the “good news” that newspaper sales were off 23.7 percent in the final quarter of the year. That’s the good news? It is when you consider the fact that sales were off 28.3 percent in the first quarter, 29 percent in the second, and 29.9 percent in the third. So 23.7 percent is looking pretty good now, huh? Mutter says: “If the rate of decay continues to slow in 2010, the industry will shrink at a slower pace than it did last year. But it still will continue to shrink. And declining shrinkage should not be taken as a sign of health.”

By Kathryn Jones Malone

Kathryn Jones Malone is co-director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism. She began her career as a staff writer at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, then worked as a staff writer for the Dallas Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News; as a contract writer for The New York Times; as a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine; as editor of the Glen Rose Reporter; and as a freelance writer for numerous state, regional and national magazines. She teaches journalism at Tarleton State University.