Increased competition from online alternatives

It used to be commonplace for publishers to take advantage of reader loyalty to sell ad space in newspapers. However, readers in the past were not necessarily loyal to newspapers, they just lacked the convincing reasons or options needed to change. Publishers used to think they were selling not so much reader loyalty as anger over disregard.

The cost of a fragmented readership

Readers today do not choose a single publication, nor do they choose to passively and exclusively subscribe to one publication. Instead they navigate to news articles through links on a handful of large platforms like Facebook and Google and curated sites that have little editorial content of their own.

The price of unverified voices and fake news

Perhaps even more worrisome is the threat to democracy that bad actors use these giant platforms to spread low-quality news content. The European Commission's public survey on fake news and online disinformation showed that as many as 99% of respondents claimed to have been exposed to fake news, mostly from social media platforms. The survey also revealed that this type of deliberate fake news content touches on areas such as politics, immigration, health and safety, and its dissemination is often seen as harmful to society. The internet makes it easy for anyone, whether a well-meaning citizen journalist or a malicious creator of fake news, to become a disqualified and disreputable publisher. As Warren Buffett said, "It takes 20 years to earn a good reputation and 5 minutes to destroy it". Unlike established newsrooms, bad actors have no reputation to lose. Gradually, the public became increasingly distrustful and even tired of the media. They no longer identify and appreciate good news magazines, and are increasingly indifferent to the publications they read. The democratic process can be undermined if the public holds incorrect beliefs. The newspaper industry's ability to inform the public and expose abuses of rights is gradually being diminished.

Fake news and increased competition are not the only challenges facing the public and newspapers. The media industry is also plagued by its own problems, namely the erosion of journalism by media deregulation and consolidation.