The shift is a product of the boom in smartphone use — 53 percent of those surveyed said they use their smartphone to get news, according to the study.

A Pew Research survey also found that 63 percent of Twitter and Facebook users get their news from the social media sites as of 2015, up from 52 percent and 47 percent in 2013 respectively.

“The move towards a more distributed environment offers publishers opportunities to reach new audiences on an unprecedented scale,” Reuters Institute director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen told Financial Times (FT) Tuesday, “but as people increasingly access news via third-party platforms, it will become harder and harder for most publishers to stand out from the crowd, connect directly with users, and make money.”

Ad revenue, a major source of income for newspapers, has taken a drastic hit in recent years. Ad revenues for newspapers have dropped from nearly $45 billion in 2003, to just over $16 billion as of 2015.

“Winter really is coming for many of the world’s news publishers,” chief executive of the New York Times told FT. More evidence for that claim comes in the form of the “newsroom workforce,” which has seen a decline from its high of 57,000 employees in 1989 to just about 40,000. Likewise, readership continues to decline as well. Over half the country read at least one newspaper a day in 2000, now only 40 percent do so.

A study done on millenials by Media Insights, The Associated Press, and the NORC at the University of Chicago shows that when 24 news topics were probed, Facebook was the leading source for 13 of those stories — Facebook finished second in another seven studies.

Another finding from Media Insights shows national politics is ranked ninth on a list of topics regularly followed by millennials, finishing behind other topics such as music, TV, and movies, sports and cooking.

Since most people are using smartphones to get their news and they have already paid for the ability to connect to the internet — where they can get free news — it stands to reason that the paid medium is waning.

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