According to an article published on the Nieman Journalism Lab website, "print is still king", with only 3% of newspaper reading taking place online.

Journalist Martin Langveld says that his study - in which he attempts to calculate the average number of online page impressions compared to print - "was prompted" by an earlier article by John Duncan on his blog, Inksniffer, which concludes that web metric data for newspaper sites is grossly misleading. Using the UK's Guardian site as a starting point, Duncan's study shows that the act of digesting a newspaper online only equates to about 17% of the total page impressions made by its print equivalent.

Langveld applies Duncan's approach in an effort to analyse the US market. Using a combination of "educated guesses" and "reasonable" assumptions together with figures supplied by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), Langveld argues that by looking at page views and/or time spent reading, 96% of total newspaper consumption actually occurs within print and not on the web.

Langveld asserts that his findings may explain why online advertising revenue in the US remains at less than 10% of the current print total, before suggesting that web figures proffered are a propaganda tool employed by interested parties:

"Is it possible that newspapers assigning, by accounting maneuvers, a disproportionate share of their revenue to their online divisions, for example when they arbitrarily assign to online a percentage of the revenue in combination print/web ad packages, or credit a revenue share to online revenue in instances where advertisers are merely bonused online exposure as added value to a print buy?"

Langveld's report is contrasted by Bloomberg columnist David Pauly, who says "the outlook for papers has never been worse." In his post entitled Newspapers Are on Fast, Worrisome Path to Oblivion, Pauly reiterates fears that print newspapers are on their way out. A self-confessed print fan, Pauly gives an example of how he went to an online site for details on a stock market report and found that the author had put together the information using information compiled by five major newspapers.

"We clearly can't depend on a handful of Web rewrite people to provide meaty stories about local politicians on the take, widespread killings in Darfur or how a famous Wall Street firm died" says Pauly, failing to note that the author of the stock market report that he refers to, could just as easily have obtained the information from the online versions of the same news titles. After all, there's no reason why trained web journalists cannot themselves take up the investigative challenge.

Yet, the aim of Pauly's post is not to attack online reporting. He is rightly concerned about the declining trend of advertising revenue over the last three years and uses the same data provided by the NAA to make his case. According to the NAA site, advertising losses amounted to a decrease of almost 18% in 2008 alone. Even web ad spend went down by 1.8% last year.

So, who's right?

In reality, both Langveld and Pauly make valid points. Although, if we also include Duncan's observation that print is "not even close to being dead", which side are we inclined to believe?

The truth is some print newspapers have died and it is unlikely we'll see these resurrected in any other form than an online version, as has already happened with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Ann Arbor News. However, using metric figures to tell people they should "laugh off" fears that print is dead is itself a distortion of the facts. Lest we forget, the newspaper industry - print or web - is a business and like all businesses it needs to find ways, at the very least, to offset its running costs with a sustainable business model. With additional pressure forced on by the economic climate, the industry has so far failed to figure out a suitable, robust alternative with many papers closing, publishers going bankrupt and readers migrating online.

That paper consumption is higher than web-based news intake is, for the time being, besides the point - unless such figures are used to entice advertisers back to print, but given the current climate, this is unlikely to happen any time soon, and even then this will not be enough to give the industry the economic boost it so desperately needs.

So, the answer lies somewhere in the middle: Simply put, yes, the situation is worrying and yes, it appears that more newspaper closures will follow. However, if newspapers can figure out a way to make more money online, whilst also hanging onto their print audiences, there is no reason why print should die off. According to Rupert Murdoch, the only way to do this is for news sites to charge readers for the right to access online content, although News Corp CEO Vivian Schiller disagrees with this view, claiming that a paywall is likely to drive readers away. Once again, the answer probably lies somewhere in between.

Sources: Nieman Journalism Lab , Inksniffer , NAA , Bloomberg