Tiffany Swan

4/09/09

JMC 201

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/dying_newspaper_trend_buys

The history of newspaper goes back five centuries. In Renaissance Europe handwritten newsletters circulated privately among merchants, passing along information about everything from wars & economic conditions to social affairs. In America, the first newspaper appeared in Boston in 1690, entitled Publick Occurrences. Two more papers made thier appearance in the 1720's in Philadelphia and New York.

American newspapers failing at the fastest rate since the middle of the 20th century. Today's losses leave some communities with no newspaper and alot of people with no jobs. How will the citizens learn about whats going on in their community now? The newspapers' financial problems began before the current recession. Since 2007, newspapers have failed, declared bankruptcy or switched to online editions in Seattle, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles,Dener,and Ann Arbor. So, what are the journalist who lost their job supposed to do? That, is a million dollar question and I feel so bad that they have to go through this bad time. What happen to the newspaper company after all those years? (Another million dollar question)

This is definetly a problem and this makes me question my future. Since I am majoring in jmc, this affects me because who's to say I won't lose my job twenty years from now? What will I do to support my family? Hopefully the journalists who lost their jobs can make a way to support their families and hopefully this doesn't happen again in other states.

Do you want to hear the good news, or the bad news first?

As you may have realized mere seconds after they were uttered out of a young Bod Dylan's mouth: "Times are a changing." What he forgot to mention was how rapidly they are changing, how they would affect the society we live in, and how they would ruin and save lives within the same moment.

It's nothing new to hear about how technology is changing the way the world works. How video killed the radio star, on-line music stores killed the record store, and how on-line media is currently digging a deep grave for print journalism.

I won't try to pretend like I'm not a part of it. The words I write are part of the dirt being thrown on top of the newspapers lifeless corpse.

Clay Shirky mentions in her elaborate essay on the demise of newspaper, that "When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place."

Are we in the midst of a revolution? A wrecking ball with too much force to stop?
Who will miss the newspaper the most? What will homeless people cover up with while they're sleeping?

Is the death of the newspaper a pointless death or an inevitable evolution? As more Joe the plumber's pick up their figurative pen and stain the pages of the vast on-line paper, when does journalism turn from a well crafted art-form into a opinionated free-for-all?

When it all comes down to it, I have faith in our technology. Even as the paper begins to dwindle, I feel that something unimaginable will bloom. I feel like we are on the cusp of something beautiful. I feel like they must have felt right before the first newspaper was printed.

till next time-

NickT

The Tribune Has New Clothes

Chicagoans awoke Monday morning to find that their beloved newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, had put on a new outfit.  "It's a whole new day," announced the paper's website. This is the 150 year old paper's first significant reformatting...ever. And despite the Tribune's optimism, one has to wonder if the changes aren't merely on par with a lightbulb replacement in an already condemned house. 

The alterations come in response to several rapid and radical shifts in the news industry. Simply put, people get their news differently than they did five years ago. The availability of online news sources has grown exponentially. The blogosphere has been born. Less and less people are buying papers because they're inconvenient, bulky, and above all expensive. 

Amongst other things, the Tribune is more colorful, bolder and easier to read. The articles are shorter. The sentences are shorter. Even the words are shorter. Pictures seem to be important. Some take up over half of the page. Glancing through the new Tribune, it's easy to notice that the paper is attempting to ride the wave of online journalism that seems to be the only sort of journalism thriving right now. 

A quick look at the editorial section will tell you what Chicagoans think of the Tribune's new suit. From Grant Park to Cicero, the reaction seem be the same. They don't like it. They don't like it one bit. The new Trib is gimmicky, dumbed-down, even shameless. Perhaps this comes as a result of historical Chi-town stubbornness, but one has to wonder what the late Tribune writer Mike Royko is doing in his grave right now.  I asked my mother, a Chicago-native for 30 years, and she seems to have an idea. 

"He's rollin' in it," she said in our phone conversation last night. "I can't even read it anymore. It makes me too depressed." It could be that Chicagoans just need time to adjust to the big pictures, short-sentences, and colorful pages, but I'm starting to think that perhaps the Tribune's latest attempt at salvation may be the paper's final SOS. And one has to wonder exactly what the paper is accomplishing by alienating a reader-base that has always been a constant.  

It's a hard fact for editors to realize, but what's killing the newspaper industry isn't anything that can be fixed in print. The internet is changing every aspect of society and most industries have adjusted. Banking is done online, for free. Shopping is done online, for free. If the media wants to survive in the 21st century, it has to move accordingly. 

Ben Gucciardi. 

         

http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-tribune-redesign-htmlpage,0,7090729.htmlpage

http://www.newsdesigner.com/archives/002913.php

http://www.publishaletter.com/readletter.jsp?plid=4680

 

The Demise of Newspapers

I’ve never really been that into newspapers. I flip to the comics, maybe the crossword. I’ll read an article if it catches my eye and has good pictures, but I have never been the girl who sips coffee and reads the paper. According to the data, I’m one of a few. Time magazine states that now more than ever, people are reading the paper. So why is it that now more than ever, they’re disappearing?

The new ‘business model’ for newspapers, is really what’s killing them. There are three places that a newspaper stands to make money: one is newsstand sales, the second is subscriptions, and the third is advertising. When newspapers start putting their news up for free online, they are knocking that down to one revenue source: advertising.

When newspapers are forced to rely fully on advertising to make their money, completely new strains are discovered. It used to be that a website could charge visitors by how long they spent on the website. Theoretically, one could still do this, but in reality, the shopper would simply find a new website to use, for free. Once you have put free news online, you rely on who wants to advertise on your website to pay your bills.

By following this business model, the newspaper is cutting out the direct connection they had with their audience. They no longer deliver news to an audience who deliberately seek it, but they are giving it out for free to those who wander upon it. When they cut out the relationship they had with their customers, there is much less of a desire to write soulfully.

With newspapers going bankrupt, they are more open to new ideas, and more likely to form alliances with other newspapers. The news industry is not something that people want run by a “master industry” and bloggers are not an acceptable form of honest journalism. Newspapers could charge a few pennies per article, or a few dollars per month subscription. Obviously, there would be complaining, but eventually most would just click straight through if it was cheap enough. Any form of media could be charged and easily accessed, leading to an enormous amount of revenue. If people rise to the occasion so must the journalist.

Stop The Presses!...No Seriously, No More

"Hey, what were those huge pieces of gray paper called? You know, those massive ones that our parents used to read when we were little? C'mon! My dad use to swear under his breath when he used to check the sports scores on these things...OH YEAH!!! THE NEWSPAPER!!!"

The sad thing is, in 50-60 years this may not be an uncommon question. I remember doing mazes on the back of the Frootloop box when my father used to read the newspaper at the breakfast table. This is no longer the case. Now all the information one could possibly want it right at your fingertips. To be perfectly honest, the internet is giving newpapers a good hard boot.

The Rocky Mountain Press is one of many newspaper that have closed it doors because of low advertising revenue, and new online news sites. It closed its doors on February 27, 2009 because of operating at a $16 million dollar loss. The Rocky Mountain Press had considered online press, but even ad revenue would nto be able to support the debt. The Rocky Mountain Press is the winner of four pulitzer awards, and the proud owners of a sports section, photo section, and writing staff who are voted top 10 in the nation among newspapers each year. This just goes to show that even with a stellar staff no newspaper is safe from shutting down.

If the Rocky Mountain Press is not enough warning to other newspapers, then the Boston Globe most certainly is. In the past years, the Boston Globe has not exactly been making a profit. It is actually $1.1 billion in debt. The New York Times Co. is threatening to shut down the Boston Globe, if the Globe does not pay $20 million in union concessions. Tobe Berkovitz, communications professor at Boston University said, "It is a huge warning shot across the bow of the newspaper industry. If this can happen to the storied Boston Globe, pretty much nothing is safe." The Boston Globe has won 20 pulitzer prizes.

If big names newspapers like these two can be shut down, then online journalism really is on the up and up. Onlin journalism has the all the information of a normal newspaper and then some. It is true that print journalism carries history and tradition with it. However, in the global recession some newspapers are just to expensve to continue printing. In cases like this sometimes it is best to just go with the flow of the times.

Goodbye Newspapers

With the newspaper industry falling deeper into the abyss, it has Americans asking questions. What happened? Is my newspaper in trouble? Without my newspaper, how will I get my news? All very good questions, and I will try to address them in this post.

First what happened? Times changed, to put it simply. Gone are the days where people rush home from work to read the newspaper or do the crossword puzzle at the dinner table. Also, a new generation came to age. I can not speak for everyone even though sometimes I like to think that I do, but I do not know many people whose number one news source is the newspaper anymore. I know my first news source now is the internet for one, my parents' first news source is the news at ten o'clock on the television, and I had to go to my grandpa who said his primary source was his daily newspaper. The main point is this: there are so many new and quite frankly, probably more entertaining ways to get the news.

Is your daily newspaper in trouble? Well, it depends on the paper, but if your paper is a major one, i.e. the Los Angeles Times, yes it is. If the LA Times is in trouble, I am guessing your newspaper is more than likely closing as well. Two major newspapers, The Rocky Mountain News of Colorado (pictured above) and The Seattle Post-Intellingecer have already closed. The Boston Globe is another one in severe trouble of getting closed. The Boston Globe has been around since 1872, has the 14th largest circulation in the nation, and its website is very popular. If The Boston Globe is in trouble with the 14th largest circulation, around for 137 years, what does that say about younger papers with lower circulation numbers? If the Globe has to close, annalysts have said that it would shock the world, even the most pesstimistic of people.

If you still get your news from the newspaper, and your news paper closes, how will you get the news? Fewer and fewer people are getting their news from their newspaper each and every day. It has got so bad in the newspaper industry many successful journalists have had to enter a forced retirement, get bought out, or even just plain left the business. One successful sports journalist, Jay Mariotti left the Chicago Sun Times in August of 2008 stating that he noticed in the Beijing olympics that the newspaper industry was "dying". One of Mariotti's reasons for saying that was that he saw so many bloggers or "citizen journalists" in Beijing, and he was right. A lot of people have turned to the internet to get their news. Mariotti did not stay unemployed for long, he got a job as a blogger for AOL.

With all the ways to get news today, it is no suprise that one had to go, and it does seem like the one that is going is the newspaper industry. We can live without the newspaper now a days with the internet, television, and bloggers. However, a country without a newspaper is a country some are sad to see. One reason for it is that bloggers may not have as much as an obligation to remain objective. Also, just tradition: no daily crossword puzzles or sudouku puzzles. Although if much of the country is already getting their news elsewhere, who will notice and who will care if the newspapers disappear into the abyss?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/top_10_newspapers_in_trouble/newspapers_in_trouble.html

http://deadspin.com/5042366/jay-mariotti-quits-chicago-sun+times--before-struggling-newspaper-business-takes-him-down-with-it

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/25/greg-couch-leaving-sun-ti_n_179274.html

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7830218

http://www.dailyfreepress.com/staff-edit-global-threat-1.1644709

Joey Ryan

Technology Taking Over

What is black and white and dead all over? Unfortunately, soon enough it may be the newspaper. More and more people are now accessing online newspaper websites to find out what’s going on in the world rather than reading the hard copy. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed its last printed newspaper edition Tuesday, and then permanently switched over to an online only news source. Making history, the Seattle newspaper is the largest American newspaper to make this change so far.

Our society is becoming lazy. Sure it’s a lot easier to type in a URL to look up the news, but what about the old-school people who like to physically hold the newspaper and read it? For instance, I think my mom is technologically challenged. She barely knows how to work her own cell phone, let alone a computer. So if the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel decided to just be available on the Web, what would she do? She would be heartbroken without her daily crossword puzzle and not being able to rant about whatever is in the news that day!

It is also worth to point out that what if someone does not own a computer. Yeah it’s hard to believe, but there are people out there that do not find them necessary. Also, if all newspapers did decide to become online news sources only, what would happen if the internet was down? No one would be able to know what was going on in the news! The internet isn’t always reliable.

The end of print editions of the newspaper could effect journalists strongly. Because news is available online, people expect to know what’s going on every second of the day. This means journalists are going to have to spend a lot more time being available to get all of the aspects of the stories right when it happens. A lot of journalists cherish their time to get their article done within a day.

It’s sad to think that newspapers are going out of fashion. It’s especially sad when you think about how hard people in the past worked on inventing the newspaper. Physically having a hard copy allows a person to refer back to it throughout the day wherever. It’s easily transportable, versus carrying a computer around. Don’t let the newspaper die!