E-Media Tidbits

It makes little -- all right, no -- sense for daily newspapers (with a handful of exceptions) to print pages and pages of stock prices. Statistical research might prove me wrong, but I believe most investors go online to check their stocks, bonds, mutual funds and so forth these days. Also, they rely on e-mail or mobile alerts about major price changes or news developments, portfolios that show the value of individual and total investments, and so forth.

A few months back, I wrote that The New York Times was probably one of the few papers which still had reason to carry the stock tables.

Clearly, the Times felt otherwise. In this March 14 announcement the Times said it would cut its weekday stock pages, bolster its online financial tools, and substitute a package of graphics, "top 100"-style listings, and foreign exchange information.

The Times wouldn't quantify the dollar savings, but you can bet each page of newsprint cut, on an annual basis, saves the Times millions. Multiply that by four or five pages, and the impact is clear.

Why does any newspaper except The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times still run stock tables, other than local stocks? Beats me.

That said, I was stunned at a recent presentation to a group of about 150 corporate execs -- a fairly diverse, surprisingly young group -- when I asked for a show of hands from people who still used newsprint stock listings. Maybe 20 percent of them raised their hands. You could have knocked me over.

Even so, the days of stock tables in daily newspapers are fast coming to an end. As they should.