The US newspapers decline in circulation continues at an increasing rate.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations reports that the average weekday circulation of 400 daily papers reduced by over 10% to 30.4 million for the 6 months to the end of September. This was more than the 7% reduction in the previous 6 months.

Readers are moving from print to online to access news and the online versions of the newspapers are not producing sufficient advertising income to replace the loss of revenue from their print products.

While some newspapers are now trying various methods to get web users to pay for their information, this is generally not succeeding.

The consulting firm Outsell Inc. reports that the reduction of content and the increasing of price for both single papers and home delivery have contributed to the decline in readers. They also say that 90 papers have stopped publishing at least one day a week and many have reduced delivery to subscribers in small, remote communities.

The Wall Street Journal, with 2 million subscribers, is now the largest selling daily paper, replacing USA Today, which fell 17% to 1.9 million.

The New York Times was number three, having fallen 7% in the six monthly period, the Los Angeles Times was fourth, down 11%. and the Washington Post was number five, having fallen 6%.

Smaller local newspapers are doing better because the local events they report are usually not available online.

The movement from print to online seems to be a permanent trend, making it very difficult for many well established newspapers to continue to trade profitably.

The switch to online also applies to finding businesses and our Local Search facility in our US Local Directory helps in that regard. We send prospects to the 10 million businesses listed in our directory with no cost to them.

Monte Huebsch, CEO

More employees of US small businesses are losing their health insurance.

The Small Business Administration reports that health insurance premiums continue to increase and the projection is that by 2025 a quarter of the US economy will be spent on health care. 

As premiums have increased, the number of businesses offering health insurance to employees is falling, reducing from 63% to 60% in the last year.

This is accentuated in small firms, those with less than 10 employees, where firms offering coverage reduced from 57% in 2000 to 46% in 2009. 

The reason small businesses are having such difficulty maintaining employee health cover is the higher premiums they are asked to pay, 18% higher than large firms, and administration costs which are four times higher than for large companies. 

Almost 3 million employees, who are uninsured, work for firms with less than 25 staff. Over the last two years, 25% of employees of small businesses lost their health cover. 

Half of the individuals working for businesses who don’t offer health insurance have no private cover. The option of private cover is not viable for most due to the high cost, with no premium limits being applicable in 33 states, and broad exclusions which can be applied by insurance companies in effect in 45 states. 

Reforms currently being discussed would give small businesses tax credits to assist with employee health care costs and allow people to switch jobs without loss of cover. The changes would also not allow insurers to discriminate based on age, gender or prior conditions. 

With the unemployment rate increasing from 5.8% in 2008 to 8.9% in 2009, 4 million workers lost their health cover, increasing the number uninsured to over 50 million. 

The reform of health care is critically important and very difficult to enact due to the power of the vested interests involved. Small firms are the most vulnerable and urgently in need of assistance to provide or retain health cover for employees. 

We assist US small businesses with our Local Search facility on our US Business Directory which delivers qualified prospects to them without cost.

Most of the 10 million firms listed on our directory are small businesses. 

Monte Huebsch, CEO

Small U.S. businesses are not using social networking sites for business purposes.

A survey for Citibank Small Business by GFK Roper of 500 small U.S. firms reports that 75% of them do not use Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to find prospects for their businesses.

86% do not use social networking sites to get business information and only 10% have used them to find business advice.

42% have used their websites substantially to get business prospects and new business.

19% of the small firms said they were advertising more due to the economic slowdown, 41% were doing the same level of advertising, and 38% were doing less.

28% said they were using email and 25% were advertising online to attract new sales.

Hitwise reports that Facebook has 56% of social network traffic, MySpace has 30% and the next best has less than 3%. Facebook had a 200% increase in user numbers compared to a year ago.

However, U.S. users spend an average visit of 26 minutes on MySpace and slightly less, 23 minutes, on Facebook.

In the search field, Google still dominates with 64% of U.S. searches, with Yahoo having 19% and Microsoft having 9%.

As more business searches are done online, at the expense of old media, particularly the print phone books, we help small U.S. firms by delivering qualified prospects to them from our Local Search facility in our U.S. Business Directory with no cost to them. We have over 10 million firms listed in our directory and most are small businesses.

Monte Huebsch, CEO