If you are among those who think newspapers and magazines will always be with us because customers want them, consider these numbers. In 1990, U.S. newsprint consumption was 12.1 million metric tons. Three quarters of that, or over 9 million tons, was used by daily newspapers and the rest by commercial printers. In 2009, U.S. daily newspaper usage is on track to be about 4 million tons, or perhaps a little less.
The current state of the economy has very little to do with this drop, despite figures that show U.S. newsprint consumption down by 26% since last year. Overall, use of newsprint has increasingly o the last two decades. Advertising reductions and newsprint costs have caused publishers to produce fewer sections, print fewer editions and reduce publication sizes and circulations.
When the economy improves from its current state, there may be a few more ads, but it seems unlikely that pictures uses will increase. It is more likely that publishers will try to pay off some of their tremendous debt and—for a change—make a little profit by keeping operating costs stable and as low as possible.
What does this mean for photographers? Currently, there is roughly half as much space devoted to news pictures as there was 20 years ago, and it is declining. When images are used, they tend to be smaller. We have no statistics on the number of photographers currently producing images that compete for this declining amount of space, but industry trends suggest that their numbers have increased several fold—at a minimum—and continue to increase daily.