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
I couldn't agree with you more about why things are changing the way they are. I think you hit it right on when you said that one of the media outlets had to go. After all, it wasn't going to be one of the electronic versions to go (Television news, internet). It had to be something that not everyone typically used on a daily basis, and that of course is the newspaper. With other options of where to get the information, and to have that information more up to date, it is no wonder that the newspaper has become a dying breed.
ReplyDeleteI did however have one arguement to your blog, and that was the part when you stated, "One reason for it is that bloggers may not have as much as an obligation to remain objective." I think that the difference between a credited blogger (Journalist) and just a regular Joe behind the computer blogging is becoming too close through this. The media industry needs to develop a new term to dub their online journalist other than bloggers. For years, people have seen bloggers as just those regular people, and now when they see that the journalists have become 'bloggers', they lose their credibility. The industry really does need to come up with a different term to coin them. Overall though, I think that the difference that online media outlets have made is for a positive force, and you are showing that no matter how much they change, people will oppose it, and people will be against it. That is the absolute truth