The future of newspapers is a grim one. News and journalisim will remain the same, but the way in which it happens will change. Online articales give jobs to reporters, but their news reports will be more accessible to more people on the web. The internet has taken down the newspaper business with two assults. Advertisements and Classifieds, the two money makers of newspapers. Craigslist defers people from looking at the small pictureless classifieds in the newspaper and draws people to an online ad with pictures and it's free!
Newspapers do have local news though which big news websites aren't as concerned with.
I think when the millenium generation makes its way in society, newspapers will only continue to suffer because we are so technologically savvy. Like in the EPIC movie, newspapers will only be for the elderly. I can't however imagine newspapers going extinct though, because of the demand from people in areas less city and more rural.
I work on the Student Newspaper, The Ledger, our adviser Niki works at the TNT (Tacoma News Tribune). At one of our meetings, she came in stressed because her coworkers were being offered buyouts and being layed off. She told us that the newspaper's classifieds couldn't compete with craigslist. They were losing money from classifieds ads. My future goals required some rethinking. Will I be able to be a journalist and work for a newspaper? Maybe I could work for newsource online. Publishing news through a online newsource.
The world wide web is capable of publishing updated news and providing it to you cost free with google news and MSNBC just to name a few. The cost a subscription to a newspaper is definatley less than the cost of getting news online. But you do have to own a computer with internet access or an iphone with internet access.
I am old fashioned in a lot of ways, just like I was in favor of the value of physical mail. I am also an advocate for physical newspapers. Not just for kindling which my family uses them for in the end. The newspaper is delivered once a day and therefore has more value to it since it's not at your command, like online news. Newspapers also mean day old news though, with google news or forbes.com, its updated every couple of minutes. All through the day you can read whats going on by the minute. Reading the morning newspaper is more like an event. Of course reading the school newspaper which comes out every two weeks is not as up to date, but more valuable because it is rarer.
3 comments:
I Think you are right news papers will have a grim future, and I think that in the next few years we will be seeing that future come true. If you choose to do journalism online I think it would be a good career move. The internet is a booming place all around the world and is only growing. With the internet growing so much you would always have a job if not for a news paper writing for their online journals or news, than for a internet company that needs someone to write for their website.
I think that if papers are to stay alive they are going to have to get creative. I can see the fall of the physical paper, slowly losing subscriptions, losing sponsored advertising, going bankrupt or being bought out by bigger papers that can support the overhead til eventually we have only one paper in the US. They have until the people finally have no use for the "kindling". It will be a sad day and will probably happen in the lifetime of some of the very students in our class.
I think that papers that cover really really local things (the volcano, the ledger, etc) will survive and flourish. I grew up in a really rural, small town, and when I read the paper (times, PI, etc), there weren't really articles about things going on down the block from my house, etc.
I like being able to hear about things in my neighborhood, and I can't really find those things on google reader. I like the community in Tacoma- the farmers market, all the awesome, small, hole-in-the-wall restaurants I've discovered. These local things are harder to learn about online. exit133.com (there's a link on Fry's blog) is a really good place for local news and interesting things to do (you mentioned you were new to Tacoma :D)
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