Vin Crosbie asserts that it's not the internet, and he has the numbers on his side:

These presumptions ignore the fact that newspaper readerships have been declining for more than 30 years and that approximately half of those declines occured before the Internet was opened to the public or the public had any online access. Shouldn't that give publishers a hint that the major cause of their readerships' declines isn't the Internet or their content not being online?

I had been presuming that the decline was due to online movement and declining ad revenues, but if half the drop happened pre-internet - well, that points to something else. He says it's the content, and maybe he's right. The one thing that has been steadily happening over the last 30 years is consolidation, and that consolidation has brought a dull gray sameness to most newspapers. If a paper lacks a voice, why bother reading it?

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