The concept of a newspaper was first executed in 1605 by Johann Carlous in Germany. Since then, the medium has changed, though never dramatically. However, as the late 1900s brought on the revolutionary Internet, this once immortal platform began to sweat with fear. The turn of the millenium accelerated the rise of the Web and triggered a downward spiral in the relevance, popularity, and wealth of the newspaper industry. Former journalist and editor Alan D. Mutter stated in 2009 that newspapers “have ceased to become a mass medium by any stretch of the imagination,” and in a recent report outlining the internet’s surpassing of newspaper advertising revenue for the first time, IAB president Paula Gigna called this a “watershed moment.”
