It’s widely accepted that the Internet will kill off printed newspapers, it’s just a question of when. To find an answer, futurist Ross Dawson has compiled a Newspaper Extinction Timeline.
Based on this list, we should see newspapers in the USA dead by 2017, followed by the UK and Iceland in 2019. The deathwave then spreads around the world, ending with a final gasp from printed news around 2040.
Dawson has used a number of factors to build the timeline. These include global influences like the falling cost of mobile phones, tablets and e-readers; the development of high performance digital paper and trends in advertising and digital news monetisation. National influences affecting newspapers’ decline include technology uptake, government and economic development in each country.
This is just one man’s take on the death of newspapers but looking at dropping print circulations in the US and UK as just two examples, it’s hard to argue that these ballpark dates could well prove true.
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You can read more about how Dawson compiled the timeline in his blog post.
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