Newspapers Dead in Five Years, USC’s Annenberg Center Predicts

• Tweet

• Tweet

Puppies will have to find something else to urinate on, if a dire print prediction by the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future pans out.

The center believes that in five years time, newspapers will be largely gone from the media landscape, with only the largest and smallest brands remaining as vestiges of news consumption past. A report culled from data over the past decade draws the conclusion that only four major papers- The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal- will survive the coming printocalypse.

The report also pondered some more philosophical questions about the effects of the death of print on the quality of reporting. The Los Angeles Times quotes:

… We believe that the only print newspapers that will survive will be at the extremes of the medium – the largest and the smallest. … The impending death of the American print newspaper continues to raise many questions. Will media organizations survive and thrive when they move exclusively to online availability? How will the changing delivery of content affect the quality and depth of journalism?

You can read the entire report here.