Over at The Awl, there's a total bummer infographic showing circulation data for major American newspapers going back to 1990.
Spoiler: the lines look like steep cliffs. You can almost see the shuddering clusters of journalists at the edge being pushed over to a most splattery demise by the invisible hand of the market.A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades [The Awl]
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Good night, sweet prints.
Yet they still have the money to pay gold-plated stiffs like Thomas Friedman, George Will, Bill Kristol and David Brooks.
Those slopes closely match the quality of the journalism emanating from those same papers over that same time period.
Some of the time, you can fool no-one.
When I started college 1.4 decades ago the large city newspaper called soliciting subscriptions. When I declined he asked where I get my news from, and I answered "the internet". "The Internet!?" he sneered. Anyhow, I still hear his voice to this day whenever I see news of news decline, ironically posted on the internet.
The chart should have zero at the bottom, not 400,000. Doing it the way they did it exaggerates the apparent decline by a factor of two.
I would buy the paper in my area if
A) They weren't owned whole by conservative interests in a state that has only 20% GOP,
B) If they hadn't spelled my name wrong SEVEN TIMES, including two different ways in the same article,
OR
C) If they could actually get the movies times and other entertainment listings right.
As it is my local paper isn't even fit to wrap fish and it is the only paper in my entire state!!!
I'd like to see this chart superimposed with town-crier statistics.
Lifted from the comments at the Awl...
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0910/circling-the-drain.html
... where they point out that "U.S. Daily Newspaper Circulation As a Percentage of Population" has been declining since just after World War II.
Go check out the great chart that makes it clear this is NOT a new trend.
Seeing as most remaining papers and major news outlets are conservatives we can drop the "liberal media" myth.
Only if you can't read the numbers on the axis. There is no reason you can't change the area of the graph visualized if the rest of the graph is uninteresting. Technically they should have started at zero noted a break in the axis and then.
By your logic he is also over estimating the decline by not having the x axis go out to 1980.
Actually that graph uses a variety of tricks to distort the truth and make the fall look quicker and more recent than it is. Only running the axis part way to zero is a classic, but they also make everything look more extreme by making the chart too tall to see all at once and by making it not run back in to to cover all the readily available data.
The internet is a very small factor in the decline in print Newspapers, and a significant factor in the rise of Newspapers overall.
I'd like to see the same chart showing TV news ratings which have also been badly declining.
Can't you give them a break? It's really hard to spell "Anonymous" correctly!
"The internet is a very small factor in the decline in print Newspapers, and a significant factor in the rise of Newspapers overall."
That simply does not follow from any available data. Newspaper circulation has been steadily declining for years. The internet has definitely played a role in current declines in newspaper reading. If you mean that the websites for newspapers are gaining readers while print loses readers then you would be correct.
This graph definitely is used to make point but the point is correct. In 20 years the LAT has halved its circulation, the NYT is down something like 15% and revenues are not doing so hot at all.
In another 20 years actual paper newspaper might be something for hipsters and dilettantes (think along the lines of the vinyl LP)
Radio had a head start. Radio audiences started slipping in the 70s along with newspapers. TV was down between 1980 and 1985 and kept on going.
Granted the big city papers aren't that wonderful but in the smaller markets they've been pathetic for 40 years or more.
Has anyone done a study of newspaper circulation in countries where education isn't on a slide also?
Good riddance. Newspapers were a reasonably good model for the Nineteenth Century, still decent into the mid-Twentieth Century, but an appalling waste of resources in 2009.
Can we see another chart showing the reduction in deforestation as we stop chopping down trees to produce disposable day old news?
There's a distinction which should be made: just because print newspapers are declining doesn't mean journalism and journalists are over - ask Dan Gillmor, Jeff Jarvis, and others.
The need for journalism is not over - it's just going to be delivered via different media, not newsprint.
It's not "print," it's "aged news."
What about advertising online? I'd like to see those stats.
With the sharp increase and steady numbers for the WSJ after including online subscriptions, it would be interesting to see the physical and internet numbers separately.