Why Paper Is Eternal - Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press ...

Introduction *
The condition of American journalism in the first decade of the twenty-
first century can be expressed in a single unhappy word: crisis. Whether it’s a
plagiarism scandal at a leading newspaper, the fall from grace of a network
anchorman or a reporter behind bars, the news about the news seems to be one
emergency after another. But the crisis that has the greatest potential to
undermine what the craft does best is a quiet one that rarely draws the big
headlines: the crisis of paper. <strong>Paper</strong>’s long career as a medium of human
communication, and in particular as a purveyor of news, may be ending.
Exhibit A is the newspaper industry, which is in decline largely because
of competition from newer media outlets, especially on the Internet. Shrinking
circulation and ad revenues, together with rising newsprint costs, are chipping
away at the enormous profit margins American newspaper publishers have
enjoyed for decades, throwing the medium’s future into doubt. Newspapers
have been losing readers for many years, but recently the rate of the decline has
accelerated. Between 2003 and 2006, U.S. dailies saw their total circulation fall
by 6.3 percent for daily editions, while Sunday circulation was down 8 percent. 1
The percentage of Americans who read a newspaper every day has fallen from
about 70 percent in 1972 to less than 35 percent in 2006. 2 “Few in the industry
are now saying the downward trend can be reversed,” according to a recent
report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. 3 It seems entirely possible
that five or ten years from now, newspapers will no longer exist, at least not in
* Ben Reno-Weber, a graduate student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard
Business School , contributed enormously to this paper, not just as my research assistant but as a sounding
board, original thinker, lunch companion and tireless cheerleader. I am grateful to him and to the <strong>Joan</strong>
<strong>Shorenstein</strong> <strong>Center</strong> on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, whose faculty and staff are as generous, supportive
and kind a group of people as I have ever known.