“Dead tree edition” (cited since 1995) is the paper copy of a newspaper, magazine or book. Newspapers and magazines have been dubbed the “dead tree media” (or “dead-tree media”) since 1997.
 
Various terms for the “old media” include “antique media,” “deadstream media,” “dinosaur media,” “legacy media,” “lamestream media,” “fringe media,” “past tense media” and “vintage media.”
     
   
Urban Dictionary
dead tree media
Newspapers and magazines, as opposed to talk radio and the Blogosphere.
I picked up the Times in the bus station the other day. Nothing in that dead tree media!
by octopod Mar 30, 2006
 
Glossary - Samizdata,net
Dead-tree media
phrase. Paper newspapers and magazines, also known as Old Media. Also: ‘on dead trees’.
   
Google Books
A History of Mass Communication:
Six information revolutions
By Irving E. Fang
Boston, MA: Focal Press
1997
Pg. 231:
Newspapers eat forests. Teletext and videotex do not. Cynics refer to “the dead tree media.”
   
Wired
Pulp Friction
Brooke Shelby Biggs 05.20.97
It isn’t about old media versus new media; it’s about cheap media versus expensive media. The relative savings of publishing online rather than on paper are no longer as compelling a reason to abandon dead-tree media.
     
New York (NY) Times
MEDIA: PUBLISHING; Hackers of a different stripe go keyboard to keyboard.
By Amy Harmon
Published: Monday, December 8, 1997
(...)
As this article went to press, the digital polls show The Times’s Mr. Specter maintaining a stubborn lead. But at a time when new publications experiment with new electronic forms and mock ‘‘dead-tree media’’ for being self-important and stuffy, all of Slate’s contestants affirmed the virtues of print’s hack ethic.
   
Salon.com
Wednesday, Mar 15, 2000 06:00 PST
The return of the dead-tree media
Analysts are comparing the merger of Times Mirror and the Tribune Company to AOL-Time Warner, but the combined company looks more like an industrial age holdout than a 21st century media giant.
By Sean Elder
NEW YORK—Early stories about the merger of Times Mirror Company and the Tribune Company tended to focus on the end of an epoch.
   
The QandO Blog
The State of the Dead Tree Media
Posted by: McQ on Monday, October 30, 2006
Or “how many ways can you say “declining circulation”?
   
FITSNews
Dead Tree Media Blues
By fitsnews • on March 28, 2008
IT SUCKS BEING A NEWSPAPER THESE DAYS, PEOPLE
FITSNews – March 28, 2008 – According to the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue dropped 9.4% last year – the biggest decline since the association began tracking data fifty-seven years ago.