Although she parenthesized that if print revenues decline even faster than predicted, online income will rise faster, her biggest worry for the industry lies in the significant loss of all revenues from classified advertising which is moving to the Web at alarming rates, siphoning money that newspapers use to monopolize.

Within the timeframe that Fine gives, it is not unfathomable that print may well disappear. A column in Editor & Publisher by online editor David S. Hirschman hopes that the printed word will still be around by 2020, but rather doubts it:

• He feels he's "less and less able to justify spending money on a print paper in the morning"
• He's awaiting wifi-enabled, portable e-book devices
  
• Video is already an imperative in a print newsroom and provides " independent verification of what a reporter writes"
• All things written, breaking news, analysis, opinion, etc. should go on the Web as soon as they are finished: "There are almost no stories that newspapers produce that should appear first in print"
• Readers are much easier to engage and include in the news process via the Internet

Hirschman wants his news in the future to be "infinitely more illuminating, entertaining, and useful," in the future. But because of the difficulties they are having adapting to digital, "it's still unclear whether the news I get will be from the newspaper companies who bring it to me today."

Sources: PaidContent, Editor & Publisher (Fine & Hirschman)