Historic Presidential Win Boosts Newspaper Sales

November 7, 2008 · By Kalyani Mukherjee Filed Under News Tagged as: Newspapers sell out, Obama victory

Barack Obama’s historic victory in the US presidential elections proved to be lucrative occasion for the struggling newspaper industry as the day’s editions were grabbed up by buyers and major newspapers struggled to keep pace with the demand.

People who missed November 5th’s edition during the day could find them later online but at a high price. By Wednesday evening around 800 sellers were offering newspaper copies - proclaiming Obama’s historic win - for sale at the popular online auction site eBay. According to a report in the online edition of Reuters, bids for The New York Times with its banner headline “Obama” rose to $400 while those for Washington Post proclaiming “Obama Makes History” went up to $41.

At one point major newspapers like Washington Post and The New York Times found out that they had run out of copies due to the surging demand and were then led to put out commemorative editions to cope with the growing number of buyers. Likewise newspapers in Denver, San Francisco and Chicago reported selling out within a brief span of time and had to print special editions. Thousands of extra copies were also brought out cities like Baltimore, Connecticut, Hartford and Orlando, Florida.

The heavy demand for newspaper copies reporting the historic event comes at a time when newspaper industry in the US is struggling with falling advertisement revenues and is even being forced to scale down operations.

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