Featured Photos


Baseball Hall of Fame - 8/23/11

Featured Video


Avery's QuEST Project - It's Healthy!

House Construction


The Completed Home Renovation


Home Renovation - Complete!


Our House Construction Photoblog

RSS Feed


« | Main | »

1 Million People Cancel the Paper

By Brian | November 9, 2007 | Share on Facebook


James Lileks calls this chart, “horrifying, if you’re in the newspaper business.” He’s not in the newspaper business, of course, but yet he still works for a newspaper. Ah well, my life is complicated enough without trying to figure out his.

Anyway, as regards the numbers, the basic message is this: in the last 2.5 years, over a million people have cancelled their subscription to one of the Top 20 newspapers in America. TV News viewership has been declining for years as well.

There is always much speculation as to the reason, but for my money, it’s simply this: why would I pay anything (even a few cents) to read news that is at least a few hours old when I can read up-to-the-minute news on one of a dozen widely available devices for free?

Everyone says that newspapers will never die, just as television didn’t kill the radio. But here’s the thing: the radio changed. “All News, All the Time” stations have been largely replaced by (opinion-based) talk radio, local traffic and weather reports, and quick news snippets at the top of each hour. If newspapers don’t find a new niche quickly, it won’t be the Internet that killed them, it will be their own stubbornness.

Topics: News and/or Media | 1 Comment »

One Response to “1 Million People Cancel the Paper”

  1. Jeff Porten says at November 12th, 2007 at 9:34 pm :
    At the instant I read “newspapers will never die”, my Mac popped up a low battery warning. That pretty much comments on your post better than I can.