Newspaper Audience Continues To Shrink

Traditional media jobs are disappearing, and new jobs are emerging in internet publishing and broadcasting, but not enough to fill the gap, says a Demo Memo analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, by the American Consumers Newsletter by Cheryl Russell, Editorial Director, New Strategist Press. Internet media employment grew by 125,300 between 2007 and 2016, or a little less than half the 237,300 jobs lost in the newspaper, magazine, and book industries. .

And, according to MediaPost, thanks to the internet, newspaper employment has plummeted over the past two decades, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics' data, with most of the decline occurring since 2007, when the smartphone transformed the internet into something personal and portable.

Behind the decline in newspaper employment is the shrinking newspaper audience, notes the report, a trend starkly documented in Pew Research Center's State of the News Media 2016. The percentage of Americans who read a daily newspaper (print or digital) has plummeted since 2007.