Alan Mutter digs into the numbers and surmises that the U.S. newspaper industry has just experienced its worst quarter in modern history.
His Reflections of a Newsosaur blog unfurls data from the Newspaper Association of America indicating a sharp drop in revenue --- 29.7 per cent year over year for print and 13.4 per cent for online. The overall impact: A $2.6-billion decline or 28.3 per cent.
This follows a record decline in 2008 for the industry. Mutter indicates that since the NAA began keeping statistics in 1950, there has not been such a steep decline as the one in the first three months of this year.
Hardest hit was classified advertising, down 42.5 per cent.
