Newspaper readership is declining at an alarming rate – and the ramifications are far more serious than you might think.
A study released earlier this year by the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed overall newspaper circulation fell 8.7 percent between October 2009 to March 2010.
Magazine readership is also in a state of free fall. Magazine circulation fell 2.3 percent across the board in the first half of 2010, with Readers Digest posting a 25% decline in their readership, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The fall of newspaper and magazine circulation can and should be attributed to one bad idea – why pay for news when you can get it for free?
We can access news on our computers, iPhones, iPads, and Androids. We can even get news from Facebook and Twitter. News is always at our fingertips.
We live in a “Kindle World” that is moving at the speed of sound towards a time when printed media will be obsolete, and an electronic age will rule.
But imagine a world without newspapers. Imagine a Black Friday without advertising inserts, or a Sunday without Charlie Brown.
While a world without paper editions seems to be a given, news will continue to adapt as it always has. Advertisements will increase online, and publishers will find new ways to make a profit.
Online versions of the news will always exist, but its content will undoubtedly suffer as dollars from advertising and sales in the paper edition decrease.
People are already complaining that newspapers are shrinking and the content is getting worse. As newspapers decline, so does a source of solid and credible information.
The only way we can save the newspaper is to show that we value it by reading it. When subscriptions rise, advertiser confidence rises. Then everyone wins because a well-funded paper has better content.
Every household should subscribe to its local newspaper. Subscriptions are often less than $20 a month, which is less than $1 per day for sports, local news, comics and all the coupons you can cut.
We are an information-hungry society. But if the newspaper dies, a major source of information will die with it – and we will all starve just a little.
