More people now read news online than buy newspapers!

by Staff writer

As of the end of 2010, more people get their news from the Internet than from newspapers — and this has meant both a drop in newspaper sales and ad revenue.

More ad dollars now go to online outlets than to newspapers.

Some newspaper vendors in Nigeria who spoke with the Nigerian news agency NAN on Tuesday said that they are almost thrown out of their job as most of them no longer make enough sales to sustain their business.

“Vendors now have a challenge of lack of sales,” said Sani Ismaeel, who revealed he has been in the business of selling newspapers for 15 years.

“With the advent of online publications, people have now resorted to reading online newspapers…in those years, I make at least N30, 000 daily, now I hardly make N3000 a day!”

‎Another vendor, Rilwanu Ubale, said: “I can sit here the whole day without making N4000, unlike 10 years ago, when I used to make 30,000 to N40, 000 daily.”

‎“My means of livelihood is at stake; I find it difficult to cater for my family now,” he lamented.

In a recent survey conducted by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 65% of the respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 cited the Internet as their main news source.

In general, it can be said that text-based news audiences are dwindling.

Only 40% of people in the study said they read news either in an online or print newspaper, a 12% drop from five years ago.

2010 also marks the first time online advertising outpaced newspaper advertising!

It seems that recently the whole world is turning online. About 70 million Americans now read blogs, and 24 million write blogs, creating an explosion of new writers and new forms of customer feedback that did not exist ten years ago.

Advertisers also now confirm it has become more effective to advertise online than use newspapers.

It is only a matter of time, as the New York Times has noted, that print journalism is phased out.

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