It has been five years since the temporary, one-time federal bailout of the newspaper industry was supposed to have put us on track to recovery. It has been a year since the Online News Act was supposed to have dragooned Facebook and Google into assuring our survival in the longer term. How is that working out?
Well, it isn’t, of course. Industry revenues continue to plummet – at roughly $2-billion annually and falling, they are less than half what they were a decade ago. Paid circulation is likewise in freefall. As late as 2008, daily paid (print) circulation at the country’s 10 largest newspapers averaged more than 200,000. By 2015, it had fallen to a little over 120,000. And today?
