page_title: Decline of newspapers
section_title: Crisis
hierarchical_section_title: Decline of newspapers / Crisis
caption_attribution_description: English: The number of newspaper firms between 2000-2014 as reported by the Census Bureau
context_page_description: The decline of newspapers has been debated, as the industry has faced slumping ad sales, the loss of much classified advertising and precipitous drops in circulation. In recent years, newspapers' weekday circulation fell 7% and Sunday circulation fell 4%, both showing their greatest declines since 2010. Overall, the industry continues to shrink, with Editor & Publisher’s DataBook listing 126 fewer daily papers in 2014 than in 2004. To survive, newspapers are considering combining and other options, although the outcome of such partnerships has been criticized. Despite these problems, newspaper companies with significant brand value and which have published their work online have had a significant rise in viewership.
  During the early period in the American Revolution, around thirty newspapers were published throughout the American colonies, often to make a living from political currents and for a particular political agency. After the 1830s, the mass-circulation developed and during 1990, newspaper circulation was at its highest.
context_section_description: Ironically, these dilemmas facing the newspaper industry come as its product has never been more sought-after. "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."
  As the demand for news has exploded, so have consumers of the output of newspapers. Both nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com, for instance, rank among the top 20 global news sites. But those consumers are now reading newspapers online for free, and although newspapers have been able to convert some of that viewership into ad dollars, it is a trickle compared to previous sources. At most newspapers, Web advertising accounts for only 10–15% of revenues.
  Some observers have compared the dilemma to that faced by the music industry. "What's going on in the news business is a lot like what's happening with music," said editor Paul Steiger, a 43-year journalism veteran, who further added that free distribution of content through the Internet has caused "a total collapse of the business model".
  The revenue streams that newspapers counted on to subsidize their product have changed irrevocably: in 2008, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, more people in the United States got their news for free on the Internet than paid for it by buying a newspaper or magazine. "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.
caption: Number of newspapers in the United States [76]
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