Relevance: Some local officials are taking away their hometown newspapers' abilities to print non-biased news. The New York Times reported about how local officials who did not like how coverage was focused have taken away newspapers' lucrative contracts to print public notices. In most of the country, state and local laws require public announcements, such as town meetings, elections, land sales, and more, to be printed in the newspaper. This is one of the largest sources of income for local newspapers. Public officials can revoke those contracts though, which has happened in Colorado, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, and California. Florida even revoked the requirement of printing public notices to deny local papers that contract. More data: Whether it's local or national newspapers, daily, weekly, and weekend editions are trending downward as a whole. Circulation of Sunday editions of newspapers in the U.S. dropped to an estimated 25.7 million copies in 2020, down from the high of 62.6 million in 1990. |
What the numbers say: Daily newspaper circulation has declined steadily since the 1990s in the U.S. With the birth of the Internet, the need for print newspapers reduced substantially. At the peak of the total circulation in the U.S. in the late 1980s and early 1990s, more than 62 million newspapers were delivered daily. The newspaper industry is fighting to stay alive now, as it is estimated that just over 24 million daily newspapers were circulated in 2020.