Member-only story
The Curious Case of the Rise and Fall of Newsletter Popularity
Newspapers are finding it hard to stay relevant and profitable in the age of instant gratification. With reducing attention spans along with free daily rants on government interventions in the free-market, you don’t find it necessary to subscribe to a newspaper. And it’s not only you who feels so. Newspapers worldwide are going kaput because of the sudden explosion of free content on social media and other platforms. The overall advertising revenue of newspapers in the United States has declined by 62% since 2008 and the circulation fell to its lowest level since 1940.
Some governments are jolting into action to keep the printing presses whirring. The Australian government recently came out with a diktat that forces Facebook and Google to pay the newspapers for news delivered on their platform. Although governments can strong-arm corporations to bail out dying corporations in the nation’s interest, governments can’t do much about consumer habits.
And habits are consistently being nudged by the market towards short, personalized, and to the point content. TikTok, Instagram reels, short articles are the rage of our day and age. People want bang for their seconds. Time is of the essence, even though ironically, most of us…
