Recent data provided newspaper lovers with fodder for despair and newspaper haters with fodder for glee. As Reuters reported, citing Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, "Average weekday circulation at 379 daily newspapers fell 10.6 percent to about 30.4 million copies for the six months that ended on Sept. 30, 2009 from the same period last year." "Those numbers take my breath away," said Josh Marshall. "A ten percent decline year over year is the rate of a mode of distribution going out of existence." Kevin Drum of Mother Jones reaffirmed his view that newspapers would be gone by 2025. Megan McArdle of the Atlantic declared, "I think we're witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it." (Click here to follow Daniel Gross).
Chillax, people.
At some point in the future, newspapers may disappear. But count me in the later rather than sooner camp. And I can't help but think that many newspaper-doomsayers are conflating hope with analysis. According to many of the digerati, newspapers and other printed matter that people pay for through clunky old distribution systems (the mail, kids on bicycles, vans) can never make money and are bound to fail, while publications distributed online for free are destined to rule the world. (Of course, I could be guilty of the same impulse. I have feet in both worlds and could no more choose between print and the Web than I could choose between my two children.) But I also think this might be a case of making too much of a few numbers and ignoring some important ones.
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