MORE BAD NEWS FOR MEDIA COMPANIES in The Wall Street Journal:

When the New York Times Co. bought the Boston Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion, the family-run New York newspaper said it was betting heavily on the future of the highly educated, affluent Boston market.

But now that brainy, well-heeled populace turns out to be on the leading edge of a digital migration that is pummeling the Boston Globe so badly that it is on track for its first unprofitable year in its recent history, according to people familiar with the company’s finances. . . .

The declines are unprecedented at the Globe, which like most major metro newspapers has been facing declining circulation for years but had managed to keep ad revenues somewhat steady through increasing ad rates. Since the Times acquisition, the Globe’s Sunday circulation has fallen 25% to about 600,000 from 811,000, while the industry’s Sunday circulation has fallen 12% during the same time period. The Globe says some of the circulation falloff was due to cutting out bulk subscriptions. It has expanded home delivery, adding, for example, Westchester County, N.Y., this year as part of efforts to boost circulation.

The Globe has a successful Web site which attracted about 3.1 million unique visitors in September, according to comScore Media Metrix — but that is dwarfed by the 31 million who visited Yahoo News in July. The New York Times was the largest newspaper Web site with about 9.3 million visitors in September.

(Subscriber only, but you get the gist). As I said earlier, no wonder these guys are all so gloomy about the economy.