The impact of the Internet on the Newspaper industry

In the past we've looked at the impact smartphones had on the camera industry as well as the replacement of horses by the advent of cars. 

This week we take a look at the impact the Internet had on the Newspaper industry. 

The newspaper industry saw its hay day in the late 80s to early 90s with more than 120million newspapers sales each year with more than 60 million of those, being Sunday newspapers. It only went down from there, partly because of the rise of the internet. Now-days, just over 50m newspapers are estimated to be sold each year with the Sundays newspaper making half of those sales.

The internet usage on the other hand has skyrocketed with more than 290m Americans using the internet in 2019. 

The data on the newspapers sales are provided by the Pew Research Center and the data on the internet users are provided by the WordBank. Since the WordBank only provided the percentage of population using the Internet I also used the US population data from the same data bank to come up with the number of internet users in the United States. 

	Total circulation of U,S, daily newspapers
Year	Weekday	Sunday
1940	41,132,000	32,371,000
1945	48,384,000	39,860,000
1946	50,928,000	43,665,000
1947	51,673,000	45,151,000
1948	52,285,000	46,308,000
1949	52,846,000	46,399,000
1950	53,829,000	46,582,000
1951	54,018,000	46,279,000
1952	53,951,000	46,210,000
1953	54,472,000	45,949,000
1954	55,072,000	46,176,000
1955	56,147,000	46,448,000
1956	57,102,000	47,162,000
1957	57,805,000	47,044,000
1958	57,418,000	46,955,000
1959	58,300,000	47,848,000
1960	58,882,000	47,699,000
1961	59,261,000	48,216,000
1962	59,849,000	48,888,000
1963	58,905,000	46,830,000
1964	60,412,000	48,383,000
1965	60,358,000	48,600,000
1966	61,397,000	49,282,000
1967	61,561,000	49,224,000
1968	62,535,000	49,693,000
1969	62,060,000	49,675,000
1970	62,108,000	49,217,000
1971	62,231,000	49,665,000
1972	62,510,000	50,001,000
1973	63,147,000	51,717,000
1974	61,877,000	51,679,000
1975	60,655,000	51,096,000
1976	60,977,000	51,565,000
1977	61,495,000	52,429,000
1978	61,990,000	53,990,000
1979	62,223,000	54,380,000
1980	62,202,000	54,676,000
1981	61,431,000	55,180,000
1982	62,487,000	56,261,000
1983	62,645,000	56,747,000
1984	63,340,000	57,574,000
1985	62,766,000	58,826,000
1986	62,502,000	58,925,000
1987	62,826,000	60,112,000
1988	62,695,000	61,474,000
1989	62,649,000	62,008,000
1990	62,328,000	62,635,000
1991	60,687,000	62,068,000
1992	60,164,000	62,160,000
1993	59,812,000	62,566,000
1994	59,305,000	62,295,000
1995	58,193,000	61,229,000
1996	56,983,000	60,798,000
1997	56,728,000	60,486,000
1998	56,182,000	60,066,000
1999	55,979,000	59,894,000
2000	55,773,000	59,421,000
2001	55,578,000	59,090,000
2002	55,186,000	58,780,000
2003	55,185,000	58,495,000
2004	54,626,000	57,754,000
2005	53,345,000	55,270,000
2006	52,329,000	53,179,000
2007	50,742,000	51,246,000
2008	48,597,000	49,115,000
2009	45653000	46164000
2010	45037000	47337000	estimated
2011	44421000	48510000
2012	43,433,000	44,821,000
2013	40,712,000	43,292,000
2014	40,420,000	42,751,000
2015	37,711,860	40,955,458	estimated
2016	34,657,199	37,801,888	estimated
2017	30,948,419	33,971,695	estimated
2018	28,554,137	30,817,351	estimated
2019	25,952,584	27,389,866	estimated
2020	24,299,333	25,785,036	estimated

Number of Internet users in the United States
Year
1990	1958863
1991	2942659
1992	4422821
1993	5904511
1994	12795240
1995	24596334
1996	44232752
1997	58938631
1998	83013287
1999	100032281
2000	121553204
2001	139865133
2002	169081631
2003	178988231
2004	189615606
2005	200856878
2006	205676834
2007	225923405
2008	225029535
2009	217807786
2010	221756629
2011	217265481
2012	234466614
2013	225666802
2014	232422020
2015	239124399
2016	276369863
2017	283749977
2018	289248221
2019	293626412