According to Gannett, the newspaper industry will lose 1 billion dollars in revenue this year. Gannett, owner of USA Today and other newspapers also says that the rise of digital advertising is not enough to offset the losses of the print business. But this loss wouldn't mark the first year of billion dollar losses. "Data from the Newspaper Association of America shows that print advertising in the newspaper industry has been decreasing for about seven consecutive years, losing $1.8 billion in 2012." So while the total loss in 2013 is less than the prior year, it is still a major hit.
Gannett attributes some of those losses to it being a non-Olympic year, as well as to a slow economy. The article fails to elaborate on what the effect of digital advertising is having and how fast that side is growing. One would expect that the two revenue lines will eventually cross and it would be interesting to see the rising slope of digital to print and the steepness of the tend. The print world will only continue to fall as tablets become an ever increasing part of our world. New releases by Apple of its iPad line, new Microsoft and Nokia tablets, and of course Amazon's Kindle all rely on digital content and print content distributors need to better strategize their business model to build new subscription and advertising models that best offset these print losses.
