Cannibalism: What lengths would YOU take to survive?

In desperate acts of survival, papers have resorted to eating each other.

Time is money and money is everything. It pays for your home, food, technology, education, transit and basic needs - but what happens when your time no longer brings in the money? What would you resort to if you knew you would starve?

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Luckily, no reports of last-resort cannibalism have come in - with the exception of how newspapers are treating each other after record drops in both advertising and income.

According to Bloomberg, big-time newspapers have been buying each other out in a bid to grow their reader bases and combat ever-dwindling advertisement dollars.

As advertiser dollars drop, print newspapers have begun consuming each other.

Last year, 70 daily newspapers were sold for a total of $827 million, leading Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst for the nonprofit journalism school, the Poynter Institute, to state: "The case for consolidation has gotten stronger than ever. It is one of the ways that newspapers are repositioning themselves against the digital competition." 

The digital age has seen a rise in subscriptions, with 54 percent of American adults reading 18-25 papers during the average week.

As of August 2015, digital newspaper content has increased its reader base by 164 million since 2014, with 56 percent of readers falling under the age of 45.

Nearly 44 million millennials read their news over print and digital devices, with most news agencies flourishing with the help of social media.

Most advertisements appear on sites like Google, Facebook and Twitter - none of which offer local news, leaving what would seem like a prime spot print newspapers could fill. Unfortunately, by the time print news is available, the digital news agencies have already produced thousands of articles covering the same topics while offering constant updates.

The bid for readers is so intense, even digital papers continue efforts to increase their reader base. In an interesting move, The Times and Sunday Times recently announced a strategy that allows them to provide news across new mobile apps and a redesigned website.

The paper claims it will stop publishing rolling news on their digital platforms and will produce stories on an edition-based publishing model.

Though the strategy seems tricky, it holds the potential to focus on their prime-time audiences and provide relevant news to their 172,000 subscribers. After keeping a close eye on whether the idea produces the desired results, perhaps other papers will jump on the bandwagon and save their dwindling coffers.

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