*But…. what will bloggers steal from?
Why do all such texts have a GAME OF THRONES spin nowadays?
Cruel summer for newspapers
Publishers see their businesses circling the drain in rapidly decaying orbit
By Joe Pompeo
06/20/16 06:35 AM EDT
Share on Facebook
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The Internet is pilfering readers and advertisers from print. There’s a growing army of startups and platforms to which more and more people are flocking for their headlines. Announcements of layoffs and newspaper closures are so regular they strain the standard of newsworthiness.
This may sound like the same old story, but there’s a reason you may be getting the nagging feeling that lately, the storm clouds are getting darker. New York Times CEO Mark Thompson neatly summed up the current mood in a “Game of Thrones”-inspired essay in last week’s 2016 Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute: “Winter really is coming for many of the world’s news publishers.”
The past few weeks alone have produced no fewer than five studies broadcasting bleak statistics and ominous outlooks for newspapers, with some rays of light about the industry’s march toward innovation mixed in.
One of these, The Pew Research Center’s 2016 State of the News Media report, declared that U.S. newspapers had just seen their “worst year since the recession and its immediate aftermath.” Another, from PwC, described “a steady pattern of structural decline that is expected to continue over the next few years,” with $2.3 billion in lost revenue between 2011 and 2015, and an estimated $800 million hemorrhaged last year alone. Gallup, meanwhile, found that Americans’ confidence in newspapers has “hit an all time low.”
These statistical downers seem to amplify some of the reports coming out of America’s most venerable newspaper companies….
