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The Halifax Gazette was the first ever Canadian newspaper, published in 1752. It featured news of overseas European affairs that captured mainly of interest to government officials, military personnel and business owners. Today, Canada’s top three leading newspapers consist of The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and Le Journal de Montreal Though all three newspapers have over a million subscribers, each was affected with the economic downturn of 2008 as nearly two thirds of a newspaper’s revenue is generated from sales of advertisement space to large corporations, making them very sensitive to economic conditions. . In 2009 the industry saw some of the worst advertising numbers in the history of the world, as Tribune and CanWest Global Communications Corp., the largest newspaper owners in the U.S. and Canada respectively, filed for bankruptcy protection. The fear of bankruptcy can be attributed to the fact that many newspapers have lost their lucrative franchise in classified ads to websites like Craigslist and other online upstarts. To add to the financial crisis that newspaper industry is facing, there is also a new challenge with the emergence of new forms of social media like Facebook, Twitter, and other blog sites that make current news more easily accessible in real time. Although less formal than print, updates on a social media website about current events are shorter, easy to access, and even more personal as they allow room for self-correction. Though social media may take away from the traditional and respectable nature of the printed news, it allows people a more personal connection to what is happening around them. Newspapers currently attract an aging middle-class population, and the move from a print only newspaper to an online newspaper would attract a younger audience and sustain readership levels allowing the industry to survive and evolve at the same time.

Print Readership Decline

The economic crisis in 2008 has affected advertising revenues when it comes to newspapers more so in the United States then in Canada, however Canadian newspapers have still seen a decline. The growth of newspaper revenues in the True North is slowing, the same retail restructuring that has hurt U.S. newspapers is gaining speed in Canada, Canada's population growth is slowing, with a significant "baby bust" now growing up, and newspaper share of the Canadian advertising market is steadily eroding.

Canadian Newspaper Consultant Len Kubas states that:

"What we are seeing is an inexorable downturn in our share of advertising revenue. There's nobody in danger of going out of business tomorrow, but it is a decline. What we're essentially looking at is the equivalent of what has happened to General Motors' market share figures, the equivalent of Sears' market share."

Not only struggling to stay alive financially, newspapers now face the challenge of appealing to an audience under 50 years of age. Michael Kinsley writes in the Time International Canadian Edition that the problem now is:

"to get people under 50 or so to pick up a newspaper. Damp or encased in plastic bags, or both, and planted in the bushes outside where it's cold, full of news that is cold too because it has been sitting around for hours, the home-delivered newspaper is an archaic object. Who needs it? You can sit down at your laptop and enjoy that same newspaper or any other newspaper in the world. Or you can skip the newspapers and go to some site that makes the news more entertaining or politically simpatico. And where do these wannabes get most of their information? From newspapers, of course. But that is mere irony

This touches on a major reason for the decline of newspaper readership in that simply, the newspaper has become and inconvenience in present day life. With the emergence of new technologies such as the Amazon Kindle, the iPad and other tablets and all the apps that come with them, buying and reading newspapers has become a habit of the past. Those currently employed in the broadcasting field are aware that all forms of news media are under siege because of the increasing number of competitive content providers, but newspapers in particular face the brunt of this problem. This raises the question of whether or not newspapers should make the move to the Internet. On the one hand, doing so would cause them to give news away for free, as they would not be making any money in selling hard copies of their newspaper. On the other hand however, readership would rise as a result of a younger and more technologically driven generation who would take advantage of a reliable and easily accessible and portable news source.

The Future of News Media: The Internet

When asked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper the Haaretz, if he saw the New York Times still being published in five years time, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. replied:

"I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing The Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either."

Though this may seem surprising and unsettling as a response from one of the world’s most successful newspapers currently in circulation today, Sulzberger continues on to say:

"The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we’re leading there. We are continuing to invest in our newspapers, for we believe that they will be around for a very long time. This point of view is not about nostalgia or a love of newsprint. Instead, it is rooted in fundamental business realities. It is my heartfelt view that newspapers will be around — in print — for a long time. But I also believe that we must be prepared for that judgement to be wrong. My five-year timeframe is about being ready to support our news, advertising and other critical operations on digital revenue alone…whenever that times comes..”

Though The New York Times is an American newspaper, many Canadian newspapers share the same ideology as Sulzberger. They believe that though much of their revenue is still gained through their traditional print and reader methods, that having the newspaper as an online medium and being prepared and up to date with technology will keep them safe for the next decade. It is striking that the major news websites in Canada and worldwide: CNN, BBC, The New York Times, CBC, The Guardian, the Globe and Mail, etc. are virtually all becoming multi-media in their offering. Their online coverage now includes print and video and, in some cases, audio — regardless of whether their origins as a company were in newspapers or broadcast. In today’s fierce media world, the tribal corporate T-shirts are becoming irrelevant as news organizations position themselves increasingly as multi-platform ‘content providers’. One of the main concerns that newspapers have with online media however is that anyone can contribute anything virtually anywhere, making it a somewhat less respectable source for important information. Whether it be a comment on a reputable newspaper website or a blog, the Internet is home to a vast variety of people that can give themselves an authoritative voice. Michael Kinsley expresses his concerns with this matter in saying:

“There is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports.”

This paints an avid picture of the fears that the newspaper industry has when moving from print to digital ink, as the Internet may undermine the legitimacy and reputation of something that is traditionally trusted. However, in keeping up with the growing flood of information is a boon to the newspaper industry as they alone have the resources and capabilities to turn mass amounts of current information into reader friendly material.

Social Media and the News

Those that are involved in the media world today should embrace this new form of news media and welcome the changes, because they have no choice. Though this is the harsh reality of the current situation, it also acts as an opportunity for the news and newspaper industries to form a new partnership with their readers. Though both newspapers and the online sources would report the same events, online sources like blogs and Twitter for example, have a much shorter “attention span” when dealing with news items. On blogs, 53% of the lead stories in a given week stay on the list no more than three days. On Twitter, that is true of 72% of lead stories, and more than half (52%) are on the list for just 24 hours. As for the differing agendas, the study found that "blogs still heavily rely on the traditional press - and primarily just a few outlets within that - for their information." More than 99% of the stories linked to in blogs came from legacy outlets such as newspapers and broadcast networks. And just four - the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post - accounted for fully 80% of all links. Whereas with Twitter, it is less tied to traditional media, with only 50% of links to those four news outlets and 40% to web-only news sites. One other interesting finding: Each social media platform also seems to have its own personality and function... bloggers gravitated toward stories that elicited emotion, concerned individual or group rights or triggered ideological passion. Social media tend to home in on stories that get much less attention in the mainstream press. And there is little evidence... of the traditional press then picking up on those stories in response. Blogs therefore seem to be the halfway point between traditional news media and the news media of the Internet age, as their information sources are reputable places for information though they still convey an emotional response. Twitter on the other hand, is the new form of news media. Quick spurts of information that last merely 24 hours at most on a list of current events can be followed, absorbed and discarded by readers. Twitter provides a more personal way of informing readers of current events as it allows the person "tweeting" to convey emotion, self-correct, and reply in real time, which allows for a more one on one relationship with the reader.

The US and The UK

WIth the economic crisis of 2008, the Canadian and American newspaper industries were not the only victims, as the UK also saw a heavy decline in the industry. The decline in the UK was only second to that of the United States, at a drop of 25% and 30% respectively. Though the decline was steep for both the UK and the US, newspapers are unlikely to disappear, however it was noticed that there was an increase in online reading. Though with that increase also came the consensus that the willingness to pay for online news sources remained low. As discussed, the sale of advertising space in newspapers plays a central role in the profit of the newspaper. Online newspapers have only contributed about 4% to the overall profit, according to the study in The Guardian, however, the reworking of the online news source will continue, as something must be done to try and make up for the immense profit loss.

What the Future Holds

In a CBC News article written by the editor in chief at the time, Tony Burman, the end of the print era is discussed. The article discusses the Swedish newspaper Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, founded in 1645 dropping it's print edition and becoming entirely an online publication. For Canada, this means that the same thing is a possibility in the future with it's newspapers as well. Though the Post-och Inrikes Tidningar only publishes legal announcements of corporations and government organizations, it is the perfect example of what the future of newspapers is expected to be.
Though there was a decline in readership after the economic crisis of 2008, Canadian newspapers seem to have cornered the market on keeping readerships at a higher average then those of the United Kingdom and the United States. Part of cornering that market required the movement from strictly paper printed news, to a more technologically advanced form of news. This consists of creating online versions of newspapers, and adapting to social media contexts like Twitter and giving up to date news spurts in real time.
With Canada's ability to maintain a steady flow of readership into the news media world, the possibilities are endless. Newspapers are the means to an end but not the end entirely, moreover, an end of an era of strictly news that is printed and distributed by hard copy. It opens up the doors for those in the news media industry to form new relationships with readers in an age where newspapers appeal to mostly those of an aging, middle-class population. In order for the newspaper industry in Canada to stay strong, new forms of media must be explored and newspapers must become multi-faceted organizations that cater to more than one form of broadcasting the news. Regardless of whether or not the news is printed and sold in hard copy form, an online newspaper is still a newspaper.