When newspapers as big as the Dallas Morning Snooze and the Austin American Stateless (give me more time, I'll create a better riff) are running half-page house ads to tout a "master couponing special" they're sponsoring, you know they're struggling.
First, Americans use less than 1 percent of the coupons we're bombarded with. That's probably because of other factors, like more and more coupons requiring the purchase of multiple products.
This long listicle also notes that mobile couponing is on the rise. How much of that is NOT from mobile-formatted e-editions, or even from mobile editions of a newspaper's website in general is anybody's guess, but let's just say "a lot." Listicle point No. 17 — and this is from 2009, the Neolithic Era of mobile devices — says that mobile plus computer coupons were already then past traditional print ones. A 2014 listicle says print coupon usage has declined by 15 percentage points since just 2010.
In other words, the Snooze and Stateless are probably, once again, pursuing something about ... 5 years too late? (Hey, at least the Stateless has a paywall!) Or paying a third-party consultant to teach people how to use Groupon and such as much as newspaper coupons — unless you've put a gag order on the presenter.
That said, if Felix Salmon is right about how legacy print's bromance with Facebook will start backfiring this year, maybe legacy print's going to start getting more desperate.
Note to Dallas: It's called a paywall, before you do desperate stuff like this.
Note to Austin: If you can't sell ads above 15 percent of newshole on a TUESDAY, not just a Monday, it's called cutting pages in print.
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