THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY TODAY

The newspaper industry today continues the trends of consolidation and concentration of ownership first established in the 19th century. But a late-20th-century phenomena, the Internet, promises to revolutionize the newspaper industry worldwide.

A. Consolidation: The number of newspapers in circulation continues the steady decline that began at the turn of 20th century. Most U.S. and Canadian cities today have only one newspaper publisher. In Canada, only 6 cities are served by two or more separately owned newspapers. In more than 170 American cities, a single publisher produces both a morning and an evening paper. Fewer than 30 U.S. cities have competing papers with different ownership. Many people believe that the lack of competition compromises the integrity of news coverage in those cities. Without immediate competitive threats to keep them in check, papers may be less likely to present alternate views of public issues or may present the views of the publisher or owner not as opinion, but as fact. In some areas, competition for advertising with radio, television, and magazines may encourage newspapers to present all points of view. Many newspaper publishers, however, own radio and television stations, often in the same city where their papers are publishedThe tendency toward newspaper chains—ownership of a number of newspapers by a single company—which began with Hearst and Scripps in the United States in the late 1800s, has also increased worldwide. In Canada about two-thirds of the total circulation is owned by five large corporations, four of which operated internationally. The largest newspaper chain is Gannett Co., which owned 94 newspapers with a circulation totaling about 8 million worldwide in 2002

B. Newspaper Chains: The rapid and widespread expansion of the Internet has enabled millions of people to read a variety of daily newspapers online, usually free of charge. This trend, along with the rise of 24-hour cable television news networks, has caused subscription and circulation rates to decline. The percentage of Americans getting news from the Internet grew rapidly during the late 1990s. In 2002 some two-thirds of adult Americans were getting the news online. Roughly one fourth of all Americans get news from the Internet on an average day. Today almost all of the world’s major newspapers have online versions. Most medium- to large-sized daily newspapers in the United States and Canada also publish on the Internet. These developments have led some media experts to predict that the printed newspaper will give way to fully electronic information services in the early decades of the 21st century. But whatever its medium—electronic or print—the newspaper will likely remain an important feature in modern society.