JERUSALEM — The mainstream newspaper Maariv is on the verge of closing, apparently having lost a fierce 64-year contest against the populist Hebrew tabloid Yediot Aharonot. On Thursday, Haaretz, the flagship broadsheet of Israel’s left-wing intelligentsia, was not published for the first time in three decades; the newsroom held a one-day strike to protest the planned layoff of scores of employees.

Israel’s print media are in crisis, squeezed by both the global pressures of the digital age and a small, crowded Hebrew-language market that is undergoing convulsions of its own. Channel 10, one of Israel’s two commercial television stations, also hangs precariously, waiting to be salvaged either by the government or by investment from abroad.

Media experts here speak of an ominous trend: a once-diverse news bazaar that is becoming more concentrated and prone to political influence. In particular, they say, the economics of the print media have been skewed by the arrival five years ago of Israel Hayom, a free national newspaper owned by Sheldon Adelson, a conservative American billionaire who is a staunch supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel Hayom, viewed as pro-Netanyahu, now claims the widest distribution of any Hebrew newspaper on weekdays. Public television and radio have also come under tighter state control.

While newspapers worldwide are struggling, in the small market of Israel, with its population of nearly eight million Hebrew, Arabic and Russian speakers, the threat seems magnified. Given its size, Israel has a relatively large number of media outlets, said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, who leads the Media Reform Project at the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent research center. That intensifies the competition among newspapers for readers and advertising, and Israel Hayom, with Mr. Adelson’s backing, has been able to take over a larger share of the market.