Newspapers as we have known them are dying. The percentage of Americans who buy and/or read a daily newspaper is steadily dropping.
Back in 1970, they sold roughly one newspaper per household every day in America. In 2002, daily newspaper sales equaled only half the households. The number of households in that time period increased by 88 per cent, to 119.3 million. Daily newspaper circulation dropped 11 per cent, to 55.2 million. (See chart below)
Where Do You Get Your News?
The audience for broadcast network television news has also declined in recent years. Those viewers shifted to cable TV channels. The combined network and cable TV news audience has been steadily growing.
And the Internet was mentioned in 2004 as a news source by 29 per cent of those polled. Eight years earlier, only two per cent of those surveyed mentioned the Internet.
Source: Editor & Publisher, U.S. Census Bureau
The above plot shows that the ratio of daily newspapers produced to the number of U.S. households was about 1:1 in 1970 and has dropped to less than 1:2 by 2002. The Sunday papers have not faired much better over the years. The number of newspapers produced has actually declined over the last 12 years shown. Not a happy picture for our liberal print media.
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