Interesting theory on the decline in newspaper sales brought to you by Chris Powell, managing editor of the Journal Enquirer of Manchester, Conn:
[S]ocial disintegration and decline in civic engagement coincide with the decline of traditional journalism just as much as the rise of the Internet does.Indeed, newspapers still can sell themselves to traditional households -- two-parent families involved with their children, schools, churches, sports, civic groups, and such. But newspapers cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read. And such households constitute a rising share of the population.