The Newspaper Death Watch

By now you know the story: The business of newspapers is in decline. It's a terminal decline, if you believe experts such as Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California at Annenberg. His research suggests traditional media in general must learn to shrink but newspapers in particular are a special case. "When an offline reader of a paper dies, he or she is not being replaced by a new reader," he said. "How much time do they have? We think they have 20 to 25 years." Of course, newspaper owners aren't going to just give up and wait -- and that's why Ad Age is launching this series about the 1,437 dailies still working hard in the U.S. It'll look at the thought leaders in the industry, their attempts to leave the past -- and even formats -- behind and their strategies for finding new business models. But first the industry's travails, because the news last week was full of them.
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