Many posts have discussed the decline of print newspapers. Underlying that trend is the decline of print advertising. (The old saying is that the business of for-profit media is selling eyeballs to advertisers.) In an Axios profile of outgoing Meta president Sheryl Sandberg, Sara Fischer offers a telling graph:
The total combined print and digital circulation for locally focused U.S. daily newspapers in 2020 was 8.3 million for weekday (Monday-Friday) and 15.4 million for Sunday. Each of these numbers is roughly on par with the previous year, but they are still among the lowest reported: Total weekday circulation is down 40% since 2015, the first year available for this analysis. Similarly, total Sunday circulation has fallen 45% since 2015.
