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No They Aren’t – Not Yet, Anyway
Yes, newspapers are facing the toughest times ever, and yes, the
Internet can offer many things that printed papers can’t.
But pundits and prognosticators have been predicting the death of

newspapers for decades. Radio, TV and now the Internet were all
supposed to kill them off, but they’re still here.
And while many papers are still hurting financially, there are hints

that the picture will brighten as the economy gains steam.
For example, the Inland Press Association recently reported that,
contrary to expectations, many papers are still profitable. And
advertising research firm Borrell Associates recently predicted that

newspapers' print ad revenue will actually increase 2.4 percent in 2010,
and 8.7 percent by 2014.
"That will be short of its 2008 level, but a long way from

extinction,” Colby Atwood, Borrell Associates’ president, told Business
Insider.
Rick Edmonds, media business analyst for the Poynter Institute,

says the widespread newspaper industry layoffs of the last few years,
while painful, should make papers more viable when the recession ends.
“At the end of the day, these companies are operating more leanly

now,” Edmonds said. “The business will be smaller and there may be
more reductions, but there should enough profit there to make a viable
business for some years to come.”
And those who claim that the future of news is online and only

online ignore one critical point: Online ad revenue just isn’t enough to
support most news companies, not in the way print advertising does. So
for online-only news organizations to survive, they’ll need an as-yet

undiscovered business model.
As for readership, while it’s true that news websites are gaining
ground on newspapers, Martin Langeveld, a columnist for
Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, recently found that more than 96

percent of newspaper reading is still done in the print editions. The
online share of the newspaper audience only amounts to about 3 percent,
he found.

Conclusion: Until someone figures out how to make online news
sites profitable, newspapers aren't going anywhere.