The Philadelphia Bulletin, a conservative weekday paper with a small but loyal following, shut down abruptly yesterday, idling 25 workers.
This is actually the second time a Bulletin in Philadelphia has closed. The first time was in 1982, but Thomas Rice bought up the name and relaunched the Bulletin as “Philadelphia’s Family Paper” in 2004.
By most accounts, the new Bulletin struggled from the start. Staffers said paychecks were often late. Ads were scarce. Critics complained of questionable fact-checking and a tendency for the Bulletin to select wire service stories that cast liberals in a poor light.
The Bulletin retained its predecessor’s famous slogan, “In Philadelphia Nearly Everybody Reads the Bulletin,” but that stretched the truth. The paper claimed a circulation of 100,000, but the numbers weren’t audited and staffers said they didn’t know how many copies were actually paid for. Columnist Herb Denenberg says he’s never actually seen a copy.
The Bulletin’s website doesn’t mention news of the closure and Rice was unavailable for comment.
The Bulletin struggled in a hostile environment and a market that’s barely able to support two daily papers, let alone three. In that respect, the story is reminiscent of the New York Sun, a weekday paper serving Wall Street that shut down last October.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 6:55 am and is filed under Business News, NewMedia, R.I.P.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
[...] via RIP Philadelphia Bulletin | Newspaper Death Watch. [...]
You would think a news paper who shut down would let people know on their Web Site and would allow for you to sign up for new and gift subscriptions. Weird.
I meant wouldn’t allow you to sign up for new and gift subscriptions. Their site still does.
I suspect the last thing on their minds is taking down the circulation promotion.
Community Newspapers should look into an innovative community website system we have created on http://www.communitywebsites.com where they can license and manage their city site with various revenue models to help local businesses.
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