I decided to start with "what does print-based media offer that online media can't (and vice versa)?" as I felt like it was the most important topic to research

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For print-based media, it can be very good for spreading news locally. Printing houses often have cheap prices for printing and the majority have environmentally friendly options like 100% recyclable paper. Because of how frequent advertisements appear on digital media, the actual content itself is rarely digested by the readers. This isn't a problem for printed media as the content is physical and people naturally care more for physical items like business cards rather than an advert on social media for example. Print is much more likely to be remembered. This can especially be said for emails as most people simply delete ones they're not interested in, while with a newspaper people are likely to read every bit of it. People can also form a loyal customer base around print media as well, such as certain newspapers like Financial Times. Having this makes revenue more sustainable and consistent as they'll buy weekly, monthly and even yearly. Its heavily underestimated how many people actually read print media as Baby Boomers read 9.2 magazines per month, Gen X read 9.1 and Millennials read 8.9. Specifically Gen Z (1995 - 2012) had been seen as the generation saving print and 61% of them think being online less would be beneficial, they're now the prime audience of print media 

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Using print-based media is communicating in a different way than most other companies do, making them stand out more. As more companies use digital marketing it becomes harder to stand out against everyone else. Another example would be print-based advertisements appealing to more visual learners. While talking about advertisements, people naturally trust print media and news as fact more than digital, with 34% of readers trusting print advertisements more than adverts from search engines. It also has a higher ROI (Return on Investment) than digital media due to print media having a long shelf life in local places such as a doctor's office or a library, therefore making it more likely for people to read it and the advertisements in print media overtime. Print media is evolving and is still used for business cards, brochures and pop-up stands

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Problems with print-based media are common though, for starters print-based media is often local. Publishers who print  globally are very rare to find. And print can be seen as an alternative market to digital, but its still just as competitive. Every publisher wants to stand out against every other. It can also be hard to target a specific audience in print since most of it ends up on general store shelves to make the most profit

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For advertisers print can be expensive and it require a lot of planning to get an advert on it. Adverts will have to be planned, written, designed, submitted to the publication and then paid. It can be a very lengthy and tedious process. After that they might not reach its right target audience or even stand out much against all the other ads in the printed media. In general print media also faces the same issues of higher costs and longer planning

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For digital media, it offers the ability to target a specific audience. Marketing to an audience digitally can be done in many different ways as well (TV & radio adverts, social media such as Twitter & Facebook, pay-per-click adverts and more) and can spread quickly and effectively. It can also be accessed at any time very easily by its audience, its not time-locked like waiting for a library to reopen. Digital media doesn't take as much effort as print to read through either. Because its digital it can also be edited quickly, there aren't strict daily deadlines like with print. Its also very low cost and is more likely to be viewed by more people than print is
 

Another pro about digital is its ability to target a specific audience. Because its not meant to be on a newsstand, digital media can be about anything whether its popular or very niche. Digital naturally promotes creativity because of this as well. The medium has also shifted how other people work, opening the door to remote work. An example of this would be the Slack, a professional messaging app that's allowed professionals to contact each other

Interactive media is something digital can excel at while print can't do it as well. Interactivity can help with getting the audience more engaged in what the media is actually saying, like with multimedia presentations or debates

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However there are also problems with digital media, an obvious one being the reliance on it being digital. While the globe is experiencing a digital age there are still people who can't afford a computer or phone. Some people don't fully know how digital devices like that work either and have a hard time navigating through everything on it. 

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Digital media is also notably less durable, there's so much information online that people read through that it can be very difficult for audiences to fully pay attention or remember. Compared to print media its much more likely for people to forget something said digitally rather than something online. Another issue is cyber security being compromised, social networks and email accounts can be hacked

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However there are also ways for print and digital media to be used together, like with QR codes & personalised URLs or social media campaigns. They can be printed and then scanned to get digital assets, data analysts are also able to see how many people did so. Social media campaigns can be a useful and easy way to reach your audience and can even bring attention to a print-based campaign. By using print and digital media, a company can have a brand presence in both mediums. An example of a company that does this is Amazon, they have a large online presence but ever since 2018 its published a toy catalog in print

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I felt I had enough information on that so I did research into if print-media was still profitable next. I chose this topic to be next as it felt relevant with the previous question

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In a study comparing print media profits to other broadcast media (internet, social media, TV, radio), it was discovered that print media is more profitable with the return of investment being higher

However, newspapers have been on a steady decline with most of its readership and ad revenues going to digital. Its been going on for years but was significantly impacted by the pandemic. Even including digital profits its still gone down, from $12.45 billion ad revenue in 2019 to $8.8 billion in 2020. Ad revenue specifically has been coming more and more from digital (currently at 39% when in 2011 it was 17%). This has also led to declines in employment (the newspaper industry had 74,410 workers in 2006 which drastically declined with only 30,820 workers in 2020), larger newspapers were much more likely to layoff employees than smaller newspapers

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I noticed in a few of the articles that I looked at, there was the same source in it called the "Newspapers Fact Sheet". It talks specifically about newspaper in the US but could still be helpful as the US currently is the most profitable country for newspapers. It has a data chart on newspaper profits, however it should be noted that the break inbetween the lines signal that some of the data in this chart is estimated. 2020 was the first year in their data that the revenue from circulation was higher than advertising revenue