Decline of newspapers

The U.S. saw the loss of an average of two newspapers per week between late 2019 and May 2022,[1] leaving an estimated 70 million people in places that are already news deserts and areas that are in high risk of becoming so.

But the explosion of the Internet in the 1990s increased the range of media choices available to the average reader while further cutting into newspapers' dominance as the source of news.

"[8] "Simply put", wrote The Buffalo News owner Warren Buffett, "if cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the Internet, had come along first, newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed.

A report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism described how a 'second wave of disruption' had hit news organisations,[13] with publishers such as The Economist having to employ large social media teams to optimise their posts and maximise traffic.

[15] Since the beginning of 2009, the United States has seen a number of major metropolitan dailies shuttered or drastically pruned after no buyers emerged, including the Rocky Mountain News, closed in February, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, reduced to a bare-bones Internet operation.

[20] One of the few large dailies finding a buyer is The San Diego Union-Tribune, which agreed to be sold to a private equity firm[21] for what The Wall Street Journal called "a rock-bottom price" of less than $50 million—essentially a real estate purchase.

[26] McClatchy subsequently announced large layoffs and executive pay cuts, as its shares fell into penny stock territory.

[40] In January, the chain Associated Newspapers, now DMG Media, sold a controlling stake in the Evening Standard as it announced a 24% decline in 2008 ad revenues.

In March 2009, parent company Daily Mail and General Trust said job cuts would be deeper than expected, spanning its newspapers, which include the Leicester Mercury, the Bristol Post and the Derby Telegraph.

[42] A 2023 Department for Culture, Media and Sport committee report revealed that over 300 local newspaper titles closed between 2009 and 2019, and that those who remain are having to compete with fewer resources and journalists against online news providers.

MP Damian Green said "With the shift towards online readership swallowing up traditional print revenues, many local newspapers which have served their communities for years have struggled to keep their heads above water".

Sales of newspapers rose in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, but fell in other regions of the world, including Western Europe, where the proliferation of free dailies helped bolster overall circulation figures.

"Power is shifting to the individual journalist from the news outlet with more people seeking out names through search, e-mail, blogs and social media," the industry publication Editor & Publisher noted in summarizing a recent study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism foundation.

"[56] Where once the ability to disseminate information was restricted to those with printing presses or broadcast mechanisms, the Internet has enabled thousands of individual commentators to communicate directly with others through blogs or instant message services.

[57] Even open journalism projects like Wikipedia have contributed to the reordering of the media landscape, as readers are no longer restricted to established print organs for information.

"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content," Rupert Murdoch told the World Media Summit in Beijing, China.

The technology revolution has meant that readers accustomed to waiting for a daily newspaper can now receive up-to-the-minute updates from Web portals, bloggers and new services such as Twitter.

Even where the problems are felt most keenly, in North America and Europe, there have been recent success stories, such as the dramatic rise of free daily newspapers, like those of Sweden's Metro International,[62] as well as papers targeted towards the Hispanic market, local weekly shoppers,[63] and so-called hyperlocal news.

[69] "As succeeding generations grow up with the Web and lose the habit of reading print", noted Columbia Journalism Review in 2007, "it seems improbable that newspapers can survive with a cost structure at least 50% higher than their nimbler and cheaper Internet competitors.

A report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism described how a 'second wave of disruption' had hit news organisations,[13] with publishers such as The Economist having to employ large social media teams to optimise their posts and maximise traffic.

[14] Major publishers such as Le Monde and Vogue increasingly use advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology to post stories more effectively and generate higher volumes of traffic.

Some general-interest newspapers, even high-profile papers like The New York Times, were forced to experiment with their initial paid Internet subscription models.

"The peculiar fact about the current crisis", writes The New Yorker's economics writer James Surowiecki, "is that even as big papers have become less profitable they've arguably become more popular.

"With newspapers entering bankruptcy even as their audience grows, the threat is not just to the companies that own them, but also the news itself," observed writer David Carr of The New York Times in a January 2009 column.

[91] It may become a hybrid, part-print and part-Internet, or perhaps eventually, as has happened with several newspapers, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Christian Science Monitor and The Ann Arbor News, Internet only.

"The number of newspapers and their circulation has declined the world over except in India and China," according to former CEO Olivier Fleurot of Financial Times.

"[100] Robert D. Putnam noted in Bowling Alone after analyzing data from the General Social Survey, the DDB Needham Life Style Surveys, and archives at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research that when statistically controlling for age, educational attainment, connections to local communities, and other demographic characteristics, Americans who consistently read newspapers were more knowledgable about current events, had higher membership and active participation rates in local civic associations, participated in volunteering activities and community projects and attended town meetings more frequently, had higher voter turnout rates, visited with friends more frequently, and trusted their neighbors more than Americans who only watched news on television.

[108] A study published in 2021 in PNAS found that the average share of news stories in local newspapers in the U.S. that were investigative had declined significantly beginning in 2018.

[109] A study published in 2020 in Urban Affairs Review matched 11 local newspapers in California to the municipalities they cover and analyzed mayoral elections in those cities.

The data demonstrated that newspapers with relatively sharp cuts in newsroom staff had, on average, significantly reduced political competition in campaigns for mayor.

Newspapers on sale in Rome, Italy, May 2005
Newsroom of The New York Times , 1942
An abandoned newspaper box in Mesa, Arizona with a newspaper from 2018
Newspaper market in Salta, Argentina , 2009
Advertising revenue as a percent of US GDP shows a rise in audio-visual and digital advertising at the expense of print media. [ 53 ]
US Newspaper Advertising Revenue
Newspaper Association of America published data [ 85 ]
Number of newspapers in the United States [ 86 ]