The Printed Newspaper Gasps For Survival

Study after study show newspaper readership heading downward and the use of the Internet to find news rising rapidly.

"Each succeeding generation of under-30s seems less oriented toward newspapers. That's why pessimists foretell the long-term doom of newspapers, but we're not so quick to say that," said Pew Research Center Editor Carroll Doherty. "Newspapers are still a major source of news for many millions of Americans. So even if the trends are cloudy, newspapers have an enormous base of readers at a time when media fragmentation is considerable."

While the Internet rises as a means to retrieve news, it's still the old-school newspaper reporter walking the beat in search of the news that fills both the pages of the printed newspaper and the "pages" of news website.

"Printed newspapers are not going away in our lifetime," said David Card of New York-based Jupiter Research. "But I doubt that a lot of young people who grew up on TV and the Internet are going to retreat to the printed newspaper as they settle into middle age."

With the rise in Internet usage and the increasing prevalence of wireless access to news sources, my feeling is the printed newspaper is going to die quicker than many think.