On September 25, 1690, Benjamin Harris published the first American newspaper in Boston, MA. Harris’ PublickOccurrences Both Forreign and Domestick was considered controversial for its time in early America, and was quickly censured by government. Another fourteen years would pass before newspapers became a regular vehicle for disseminating information.
By the 1970s, physical print newspapers had a readership of 123% of all American households. With the advent of 24-hour television channels, followed by the World Wide Web, that readership had declined to only 53% by the 1990s.
On April 10, 1995, Joe Shea published the first Internet-based daily newspaper, American Reporter, providing worldwide news coverage and owned by the journalists who wrote its content.
More than three hundred years after the first newspaper, nearly 1500 daily newspapers are in publication across the USA, selling 55 million copies a day. Worldwide, nearly 7000 daily newspapers are published, selling 395 million daily copies around the globe. And most if not all of them offer their readers an online version. often customizable: fee-based (per click) through a billable logon mechanism, or for free, supported by advertising. Many have discontinued physical print altogether, relying on digital models.
Traditionally, advertisers comprise 75% of newspaper revenues, with subscriptions and sales to readers at 25%. While the additional decline in subscriptions and sales has had a big impact on news providers, retaining advertising partners in the digital marketplace remains the key to long-term solvency.
“Newspapers cannot be defined by the second word—paper. They’ve got to be defined by the first word—news.”
— Arthur Sulzberg, Jr.
Blog Reference:
Wikipedia; The Free Encyclopedia: Newspaper
Rob Corrao
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