By Don Irvine.
A new poll by Gallup shows that Americans who express confidence in newspapers as a U.S. institution has dwindled to an all-time low of just 20%.
This marks “the 10th consecutive year that more Americans show little or no, rather than high, confidence” in newspapers. At its peak, 37% expressed high confidence. Now, those expressing little or no confidence has tied an all-time high of 36% and is likely to rise further in the future.
Even worse for newspapers is that their most loyal group of supporters—Democrats and those who lean Democratic—now have a net negative confidence rating for the first time with 27% expressing little or no confidence versus 25% who still have high confidence in the printed word. Republicans still have a large net negative view of newspapers.
The future of newspapers is bleak, with the Internet having largely supplanted them as the main source of news for most people—especially millennials—and because of their inability overall to fully monetize their digital assets and offset the decline in subscription and advertising revenue that has plagued almost all newspapers in America.
