Daily paid circulation as a percentage of Canadian households, has fallen from just under 50% in 1995 to 20% in 2014. If these trends continue by 2025 print newspapers will only be in 5% of homes, leading many papers to go out of business.
The largest newspaper conglomerate in Canada is the Postmedia Group. They pretty well have monopolies in every major Canadian city except Toronto and is controlled by hedge fund operators, such as New York-based Golden Tree Asset Management who have a 35% stake. In a bid to make the papers profitable they have been down sizing staff from a few hundred to a few dozen.
Newspapers have been notoriously resistant to change and are paying the price. For example Kijiji, which is larger than Craig’s List in Canada, came along and newspapers did not want work with them, now classified revenue is gone.
When newspapers disappear who will pick up the slack? Will we see an influx of citizen journalism on Facebook or Twitter? Pew has just released a a new report that states 63% of US Facebook and Twitter users rely on the social networks as news sources, which is a 11% increase from two years ago.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
