In his latest post to the Nieman Journalism Lab, Martin Langeveld statistically argues that advertising and economic trends do not foretell a rebound in revenue for newspapers.
He pulls numbers from consumption and advertising trends and suggests newspapers are in a predicament of losing market share in a flat commodity, advertising. After all, previous economic downturns have left newspapers with less advertising than the pre-downturn period.
He sees particular concern in the online sphere, where their share has declined, too. If they don't invest heavily in digital for a post-newspaper world, they will be lost.
I agree with Martin that if papers don't invest heavily in digital they will be lost, but don't necessarily agree that good print advertising times won't come back. There needs to be a greater seperation between media sites and papers so that one is not a replica of the other. This combined with constant attention directed to eachother via each respective medium should draw greater audiences to both and witht the right incentives for readers to read both rather than one or the other advertising dollars should follow.
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