Mediapost published a summary about some interesting statistics on Internet usage. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that people now rely on the Internet for news versus newspapers.

And more interesting is that younger people, ages 18-29, get their news from the Internet more than television.

The report goes on to say that it's not just this decline in readership that's causing newspapers to lose money, but Craigslist has taken much of their business away in classified ads.

Read the article here...
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.san&art_aid=98130

Opinion

Obviously, a lot of the local news you read online still comes from newspapers, most of those publishers collect syndication fees. Newspapers can still survive syndicating content to web portals.

But if you're a small Internet publisher, your way to respond is to put some effort behind a niche market or two, and really focus on it. The web portals like Yahoo, MSN, AOL, can't really compete in offering hyperlocal content, or very narrow verticals.

I just now helped a friend of mine launch a blog on Temecula wines; there doesn't seem to be any publication, print or online, that writes about this subject on a daily basis, or provides information at a highly detailed level.

It's the highly detailed information that enthusiasts want. What the newspapers publish is broad information. The broad information is still very popular with general audiences, but for an enthusiast in Temecula wines it's not enough. That's where a niche publisher is going to make money.

But advertisers will still purchase ads in paper publications, it's just that there's only a fixed amount of ad dollars being spent in any given month, and newspapers are going to have to compete with websites to get those dollars.