New York - The Internet is causing something of an earthquake in the United States media industry, which last year reported a nearly two-fold increase in job cuts as more people turn to the Web as their main source for news.

17 809 media jobs lost

Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a New York-based global outplacement firm that tracks job cuts, said 17 809 media jobs were eliminated in 2006, an 88 percent increase over 2005, when 9 453 job cuts were announced.

The downsizing is expected to continue, the company said, pointing to more than 2 000 job cuts announced by media companies in the first half of January.

"These (media) organisations will continue to make adjustments as their focus shifts from print to electronic," said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray and Christmas.

"Until they can figure out a way to make as much money from their online services as they are losing from the print side, it is going to be an uphill battle," he added.

Strong online or fading

Challenger said news organisations today have no choice but to build a strong online presence or risk "fading into oblivion," and they must compete with an exploding number of bloggers, industry sites and others vying for people's attention.

According to a recent study by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, 50-million Americans turn to the Internet every day to seek out news. Only 17 percent say they get their news from a national paper.

Another Pew survey found that the number of Americans who go online for housing information has doubled since 2000.

"Everything that you used to rely on newspapers for can be found on the Internet," Challenger said. "The decline in newspaper and newsweekly subscriptions will continue as more and more people purchase computers and gain access to the Internet." - AFP