Self-described futurist and entrepreneur Ross Dawson projects that newspapers will become extinct starting with the USA in 2017. While this isn’t groundbreaking news, Dawson’s charts and graphs are fascinating in their specificity on when and where newspapers will become obsolete.
I have created a Newspaper Extinction Timeline that maps out the wide diversity in how quickly we can expect newspapers to remain significant around the world. First out is USA in 2017, followed by UK and Iceland in 2019 and Canada and Norway in 2020. In many countries newspapers will survive the year 2040.
Reasons that Dawson presents for the rapid decline of newspapers are:
Increased cost performance of mobile phones
Increased cost performance of tablets/ e-readers
Development of high performance digital paper
Changes in newsprint and print production costs
Uptake of digital news monetization mechanisms
Trends in advertising spend and allocation
Development of open platforms
Checkout Dawson’s graphs and charts on the endtimes for news print media at