The lead

A newspaper was paid for by the smallest type on the page

Classified advertising — rooms to let, cars, jobs, charged by the inch — brought American newspapers $19.6 billion in 2000 and $6.0 billion in 2009. Craigslist opened in 1995 and charged nothing.

Read the lead piece

Classified revenue drawn to scale, both columns the same width. Newspaper Association of America, via Pew Research Center

An adult pressman standing beside a running press holding the final Rocky Mountain News edition, press hall in background — Scripps looked for a buyer from December 2008 and found none; the presses ran once more on the morning of 27 February 2009.Photo: Antoni Shkraba / Pexels

Three sections

One · nine pieces

Fifteen months when American dailies stopped printing

Denver, Seattle, Boston, Tucson, and the Tribune Company’s Chapter 11 filing in December 2008.

Last Editions

A pedestrian walks past the Public Market sign near a street lamp overlooking the water — The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed for the last time on 17 March 2009 and kept the globe on the roof.Photo: Stephen Leonardi / Pexels

Two · eight pieces

Everybody got a channel, then nobody had a schedule

TiVo 1999, YouTube 2005, Netflix streaming January 2007. Nielsen counted the rest.

The Living Room

A Netflix red mailing envelope beside a DVD disc case on a wooden surface — Netflix launched streaming in January 2007 and kept mailing the red envelope for another decade.Photo: Markus Winkler / Pexels

Three · nine pieces

Somebody kept doing it anyway

KPFA in 1949, Maximumrocknroll in print 1982–2019, Wikipedia in 2001, ProPublica in 2008.

Kept Going

A presenter at the KPFA studio desk in Berkeley with a microphone and lit on-air sign — KPFA went on air in Berkeley on 15 April 1949 as the first listener-supported station in the country.Photo: Pixabay / Pexels

Figures

66%Fall in total US newspaper advertising revenue between 2000 and 2014, from $48.7bn to $16.4bn.Pew Research Center, State of the News Media

58%Google and Facebook’s combined share of US digital advertising revenue.Pew Research Center, 2018 edition

105mPay-television households at their 2012 peak; below 75 million by 2020.Nielsen Total Audience Reports

Total US newspaper advertising revenue by year, in nominal dollars — Pew Research Center, State of the News Media

The figures section

Drag the map sideways to follow the coast

Where it happened

Dailies that closed or left print, 2007–2010, plotted by city — with Berkeley, Los Gatos, San Bruno and Austin, where the other half of the record was made.

Open the map

Supported by

Outlets and archives that keep the same history in view as we do.