That’s the headline of a story in this week’s issue of Ad Age.  For newspapers, the outlook seems to get bleaker by the month.  According to the Newspaper Association of America, average daily circulation for newspapers will be less than 50 million.  If that happens, overall newspaper circulation would be at the lowest level since 1946.  As Alan Mutter notes on his blog,

Though circulation has fallen back to pre-Baby Boom levels, the population has more than doubled since 1946. If you divide circulation by population, you will find that fewer than 18 out of 100 Americans today buy a daily or Sunday newspaper. Back in 1946, 36% of the population bought a daily paper and 31% took a Sunday edition

Henry Blodget, writing at the Huffington Post, forecasts where he thinks the $42 billion in advertising revenue will go (keep your spirits up, agencies, you’re not going to lose business - that is, unless you refuse to embrace the digital movement).  He predicts that over time it will all find its way into the digital arena.  But only a fraction of that revenue will stay with traditional newspaper websites.  Writes Blodget,

Newspaper web sites are only capturing a fraction of the print revenue the papers are losing, and the growth of newspaper sites has already started to slow. As the chart below shows, in 2007, the industry lost 8%, or $4 billion of advertising including newspaper web sites. Newspaper sites will capture a small portion of that new $30 billion Digital pie, but probably not much more than $5 billion. Some newspaper companies will survive, but only after major restructuring.

By 2017, Blodget predicts that $30 billion in ad revenue will flow through digital channels.  He argues that digital hot spots like Google, Yahoo, Craig’s List, eBay, Amazon and popular job sites, blogs, video outlets and mobile ads will capture 83% of that revenue, or $25 billion.  Newspaper sites will be left with the remaining $5 billion.