David Glance, The Conversation
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of newspapers are somewhat exaggerated. But traditional media is experiencing the “perfect storm” of declining circulations, collapsing advertising revenues and seismic changes in the way news is produced and consumed. This is forcing change on an industry that has to-date largely resisted it.
Globally, changes in news production and consumption are not happening uniformly. Newspaper circulation declined by 9 million worldwide in 2010 according to the World Press Trends report published by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.
Newspapers are still read by 2.3 billion people compared to 1.9 billion who read their news online.
The impact of the circulation fall has been greatest in the US with an 11% overall decline – compared to an increase of 7% in the Asia Pacific region. At the same time, newspaper advertising revenues continue to nosedive, the biggest decline again happening in the US.
The net result of declining revenue has seen the closure of newspapers and the permanent move from paper to online for others. Even for those newspapers still in business, the fall in income has seen widespread layoffs of staff and expectations of increased productivity from those who remain – the archetypical “doing more with less” … and less.
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