Look What Is Happening To Newspapers!

Back in 2007, I wrote a series of posts arguing that "newspapers are screwed."

The theory was that, as readers and ad spending moved online, newspapers would be unable to replace the revenue they were losing from print advertising.

This wasn't a new theory, but, like many theories involving the future, it was frequently ridiculed, especially by people who worked for newspapers.

But I don't think even those who believed newspapers were screwed fully appreciated just how screwed they were.

In 2007, the stock of the New York Times Company was trading for about $25 a share.

Today, it's trading for $6.56.

And the chart below shows why.

Via Derek Thompson at The Atlantic, here's an inflation-adjusted chart of newspaper advertising spending over the past 60 years:

Newspaper Association Of America

Ouch.

The good news is, contrary to the fears of some doomsayers (also generally people who worked for newspapers), the world has never been better informed. Thanks to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google, two billion online fact-checkers, and some amazing online news sites—including some run by newspapers—we now know more faster than at any time in history, by a mile.

And, thankfully, we no longer have to rely on the judgment (and worldview) of a handful of super-powerful gatekeepers to decide what we can and can't know.