The Internet Didn't Kill the Newspaper: The Web Isn't Responsible for Dying Print

The Internet may actually not be responsible for killing the traditional newspaper trade. Scientists have found that the web may actually not have spurred the decline of print.

There's the general acceptance that the Internet did have a role in killing newspapers. The newspaper business was booming before the mid-90s with top notch journalism and pages of ads. Then, the general population began interacting with the Internet, and that all changed.

Yet the Internet may not be to blame. The first fallacy is that online advertising revenues are naturally lower than print revenues, so that traditional media needs to adopt a less profitable business model that can't support paying real reports. The second fallacy is that the web has made the advertising market more competitive which has driven down rates and revenues. The third is that the Internet is responsible for the newspaper's demise.

"This perception that online ads are cheaper to buy is all about people quoting things in units that are not comparable to each other-doing apples-to-oranges comparisons," said Matthew Gentzkow, one of the researchers, in a news release.

In fact, several different studies have shown that people spend an order of magnitude more time reading that the average monthly visitor online, which makes looking at the rates as analogous as incorrect.

The popularity of newspaper had already significantly diminished between 1980 and 1995, which is before the Internet age, and has dropped at roughly the same rate ever since. Combined with the information about ads, it looks as if the Internet isn't responsible for the death of the newspaper industry.

The findings are published in the journal American Economic Review.