Washington Post 2006 Annual Report Download - page 36

The Washington Post competes in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area with The Washington Times, a newspaper
which has published weekday editions since 1982 and Saturday and Sunday editions since 1991. The Post also
encounters competition in varying degrees from other newspapers and specialized publications distributed in The Post 's
circulation area (including newspapers published in suburban and outlying areas and nationally circulated newspapers),
and from websites, television, radio, magazines and other advertising media, including direct mail advertising. Express
similarly competes with various other advertising media in its service area, including both daily and weekly free-distribution
newspapers.
The websites produced by Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive face competition from many other Internet services
(particularly in the case of washingtonpost.com from services that feature national and international news), as well as
from alternative methods of delivering news and information. In addition, other Internet-based services, including search
engines, are carrying significant amounts of advertising, and the Company believes such services have adversely affected
the Company's print publications and, to a lesser extent, its television broadcasting operations, all of which rely on
advertising for the majority of their revenues. National online classified advertising has become a particularly crowded
field, with competitors such as Yahoo! and eBay aggregating large volumes of content into national classified or direct-
shopping databases covering a broad range of product lines. Some nationally managed sites, such as Fandango and
Weather.com also offer local information and services (in the case of those sites, movie information and tickets and local
weather). In addition, major national search engines have entered local markets. For example, Google and Yahoo have
launched local services which offer directory information for local markets with enhanced functionality such as mapping and
links to reviews and other information. At the same time, other competitors are focusing on vertical niches in specific content
areas. For example, AutoTrader.com and Autobytel.com aggregate national car listings; Realtor.com and move.com
aggregate national real estate listings; while Monster.com, Yahoo! Hotjobs (which is owned by Yahoo!) and
CareerBuilder.com (which is jointly owned by Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune Co.) aggregate employment listings. All
of these vertical-niche sites can be searched for local listings, typically by using zip codes. Finally, several new services
have been launched in the past several years that have challenged established business models. Many of these are free
classified sites, one of which is craigslist.com. In addition, the role of the free classified board as a center for community
information has been expanded by ""hyper local'' neighborhood sites such as dcurbanmom.com (which provides
community information to mothers in the DC Metro area) and backfence.com (which offers community information about
McLean and Reston, Virginia as well as Bethesda, Maryland). Some free classified sites, such as Oodle and Indeed,
feature databases populated with listings indexed from other publishers' classified sites. Google Base is taking a somewhat
different approach and is accepting free uploads of any type of structured data, from classified listings to an individual's
favorite recipes. For its part, Slate competes for readers with many other political and lifestyle publications, both online and
in print, and competes for advertising revenue with those publications as well as with a wide variety of other print
publications and online services, as well as with other forms of advertising.
The Herald circulates principally in Snohomish County, Washington; its chief competitors are the Seattle Times and the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which are daily and Sunday newspapers published in Seattle and whose Snohomish County
circulation is principally in the southwest portion of the county. Since 1983 the two Seattle newspapers have consolidated
their business and production operations and combined their Sunday editions pursuant to a joint operating agreement,
although they continue to publish separate daily newspapers. The Enterprise Newspapers are distributed in south
Snohomish and north King Counties where their principal competitors are the Seattle Times and The Journal Newspapers, a
group of monthly controlled-circulation newspapers. Numerous other newspapers and shoppers are distributed in The
Herald
's and The Enterprise Newspapers ' principal circulation areas. La Raza del Noroeste 's principal competitors in its
circulation territory are the weekly Spanish-language newspapers El Mundo and Seattle Latino, although it also competes
with various other Spanish-language media.
The circulation of The Gazette Newspapers is limited to Montgomery, Prince George's and Frederick Counties and parts of
Carroll County, Maryland. The Gazette Newspapers compete with many other advertising vehicles available in their
service areas, including The Potomac and Bethesda/Chevy Chase Almanacs, The Western Montgomery Bulletin, The
Bowie Blade-News, The West County News
and The Laurel Leader, weekly controlled-circulation community newspapers,
The Montgomery Sentinel, a weekly paid-circulation community newspaper; The Prince George's Sentinel, a weekly
controlled-circulation community newspaper (which also has a weekly paid-circulation edition); and The Frederick News-
Post
and Carroll County Times, daily paid-circulation community newspapers. The Southern Maryland Newspapers
circulate in southern Prince George's County and in Charles, Calvert and St. Mary's Counties, Maryland, where they also
compete with many other advertising vehicles available in their service areas, including the
Calvert County Independent
and St. Mary's Today, weekly paid-circulation community newspapers.
20 THE WASHINGTON POST COMPANY