We’ve heard a lot about how newspaper circulations have been declining over the last 30 years, but seeing that decline graphically makes it all the more gripping. Below is a newly published graph showing the circulations of a range of US newspapers over the last 20-ish years. It makes for some grim viewing. The tracks are based on data supplied by the US Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The key question it raises is where are these former readers going for their news – if, indeed, they actually consume news at all? Is the newspaper looking increasingly like a relic of the Victorian age whose days are numbered? Or, as Robert Putman pointed out in his seminal study of US society Bowling Alone, were the very high newspaper circulation figures post-World War II an anomaly and the later downward trend a correction?

The graph was created by a US blog calleed The Awl. If you’d like to see it in its original home, click here.

The downward trend of US newspaper circulations

Written by Adrian Beeby

The future of traditional newspaper and magazine publishing has been the centre of much discussion in the PR world recently. The public relatons industry, which has grown up with a huge range of hard copy papers and periodicals into which to distribute its press releases, is adapting to the newer world of online media and social networking.  But what’s been of concern is the question: will online news kill off old-style newspapers?

The case for the dominance of online news is easy to make: it’s free, its instantly accessible, it can be updated at any time and it incorporates video.  Recently I’ve heard of newly graduated journalists who’ve barely even read a hard copy edition.

But online is not paper – and paper still has many fans. A paper can be carried onto the train and unfurled; it’s easy on the eye, and it has space for in-depth articles that websites shy away from for fear of scaring off all but the most determined reader.  So even though hard copy circulations have declined, papers has survived…until now.

Until Amazon unveiled its Kindle and other technology firms followed suit. The Kindle, and devices like it, are reading screens – hand-held sheets of plastic onto which print and images can be displayed. But more significantly for the newspapers, devices like the Kindle can wirelessly download new editions or new books.

It’s not hard to imagine the next generation of these devices will also be able to handle video too. In that case, I can foresee commuters journeying to work on trains with their reading devices in their hands, downloading the latest edition of their chosen newspaper. Why consume millions of tonnes of paper and printing ink each year when the publication can be set wirelessly to each reader on a device that shares some of the characteristics of the old-style editions?

Online news may have dealt the first blow to newspapers;  Google’s advertising and the recession the next; but devices like the Kindle may just be the end of the hard copy newspaper as we know it.

Written by Adrian Beeby