THERE has been a rapid decline of newspaper sales in Australia and around the world.

A lot of that has to do with generation Y not buying newspapers and simply looking up their news online.

Fairfax and News Limited this year will limit its news being put online so that it will be available for subscription based readers only.

Mr Bernard Salt, a KMPG demographer, told The Age that the fall in spending on newspapers and books – down 11.9 per cent in real terms in 2009 – is worrying for these industries. ”Gen Y is simply not buying newspapers. If they want to look at something, they look at it on the net.”

He says e-books and tablet computers will lead this online transition. ”We are about a year off open warfare between new technology and old,” he says.

He predicts that in two to three years’ time this transition will reach a tipping point, ”then everyone will have to have a Kindle or an iPad”.

The new technology with iPhones and the new iPad makes it tougher for these newspapers to survive.

Already advertising is at an all time low and that has meant that newspapers are now on limited staff after many redundancies due to the economic crisis last year.

More and more people are now turning online – so what is the future of our newspapers? Will there always be newspapers around or will technology actually kill it?

I believe there has to be newspapers around for archive and historical reasons. It’s a print publication. You can cut it out and keep it.

Surely that’s a big enough sign to suggest newspapers can still remain viable.