If you’re not reading Howard Hurtz’s Media Notes they are well worth a read. He’s got a great column on John Bolton’s U.N. nomination. What’s also interesting is how predominantly he points to the Blogs.

The must read is his piece on "The Coming News Crisis". Some interesting remarks on circulation at the Post:

This is a sensitive issue for The Post because circulation, while still a healthy 700,000, has been declining in recent years. Circulation goes up and down for a variety of reasons, but the fact that anyone can read any Post story online without paying a nickel has got to be up there. The reason you should care is that advertising revenue from the paper version is what supports this infrastructure of reporters, editors, columnists, photographers, graphic artists and others who make The Post what it is. If that’s eroded, the quality of the paper’s journalism will eventually suffer, and what you see online will suffer as well. (Obviously washingtonpost.com also has a number of Web-only features, including Media Notes, and generates some of its own ad dollars.) – Howard Kurtz.

Some interesting data from Eric Zorn from over at the Tribune:

"The percentage of people in their 30s who read a paper every day was 73 percent in 1972, and it’s 30 percent today. The average newspaper reader is 53. More and more people, trained by the Internet, believe that information should be free, and so give-away daily tabloids are springing up in big cities all over. I realize that media professionals are studying this problem full time, but what does your gut tell you newspapers should do to remain vital and profitable in the digital age?

I’ve long advocated media planning for PR professionals. I wonder how many are doing it today. Not many I bet. If they were they might be refocusing those campaigns on where readers are reading.