Newspapers in the United States

The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post are often referred to as the United States' "newspaper of record".

[3] From 2005 to 2024, the number of active daily or weekly print newspapers in the United States fell from 8,891 to 5,595 or approximately one-third of all publications.

In the beginning, newspapers were a sideline for printers, but they eventually became a political force and played a role in the campaign for American independence.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed freedom of the press, and the Postal Service Act of 1792 provided subsidies for the delivery of newspapers.

In the 1840s through 1880s, the ongoing development of news agencies (to which individual papers subscribed for content) further helped expand the press, as a way to split the costs of distant reporting rather than duplicating them.

The rise of extensive internet use by the general public in the 21st century has caused a business crisis for newspapers, even despite the fact that they offer both online and print versions to their customers.

As the revenue from print advertising has fallen off sharply, the revenue from digital advertising is uneven and often poor, and readership has declined as many members of the public choose to get their news in other ways (such as social media or YouTube), even when those ways are of lesser completeness or quality, because of factors such as (1) absence of paywall and (2) real or rumored reasons to distrust the mainstream media.

Because of the aforementioned trends of digital archive accessibility, the cost of maintaining the machines and physical media of microform is increasingly forgone by library budgets, as the reduced need no longer justifies the expense.