Newspapers are becomming less and less of a commodity everyday. The internet is the one reason why this is happening. Everyday when i was younger my dad would give me 75 cents and have me run down the street to buy him a newspaper. Since the rise of the internet in the past decade, there is no need for me or anyone to run down the street to pick up a newspaper. It's simply unnecessary.
According to this article http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=6973782&page=1, no newspaper company is safe during this economic recession, including big newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle. If the economy doesn't rise soon, these papers could be gone. Newspapers have been the backbone to a lot of small towns and unfortunately if these companies shut down, the towns might too. For the first time ever, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post are all losing money. Those are the top three selling newspapers and are losing money, which brings little hope for all of the other newspapers in the rest of the country.
If America loses newspapers, I believe that we will be losing more than just paper. According to www.Historicpages.com the first newspaper appeared in Boston in 1704 and was called the Boston-News Letter. Americans have been getting informed by the newspapers for over 300 years and now that tradition is in jeopardy of being lost. One of the only solutions to this problem is to raise the price of a daily paper. The real question is would Americans pay more to see the newspapers survive?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I liked your enthusiasm about how you believe newspapers are a tradition that should be kept alive. I agree to the extent that it will put many talented writer's out of work and that will be a sad day when it eventually does happen. To answer your question at the end, I don't think that rising prices on newspapers will be the solution to keep the companies above water, it will actually be the end of them.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com. This is an article that discusses the topic of how less and less people are buying newspapers just for the reason that they can get it for free elsewhere. But it also discusses how the new Apple iPad will contribute to the death of journalism because it is essentially a digital book that somewhere can write and carry around with them and they would be able to download daily newspapers with just the click of a button.
The loss of The Wall Street Journal I think will something that people will miss the most because it provides factual information that business men love. My Dad reads the Wall Street Journal everyday and I know he won't be a happy camper if it becomes exstinct in the near future.
But to some it all up, it's just something that has to happen because it does not make any economic sense to pay for a newspaper nowadays because there are so much more ways of getting your daily news. Even 15 years ago people would rely on newspapers, now it's just all internet.
I think the internet is the number one reason at fault for the steady decline of newspapers. The internet is being upgraded and made better everyday, the newspaper can't keep up. There's no way the paper can get an upgrade, and that's not going well with a society that expects things to be better, faster and at their service.
ReplyDeleteChapter 8 in Stovall couldn't have put it any better in this quote: "Most websites are developed to satisf a particular audience, usually an audience that shares a common interest and a limited set of demographics." Being that the younger generations have grown up with computer technology, they are the main demograhics using the internet, and online news companies are using this to their advantage.
You also brought up a good point with the recession. People don't want to spend any more money than they have to, so why buy the newspaper when you can read news online for free, and much faster.
An online CNN article, http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/19/newspaper.decline.layoff/ ) said that "easily accessible, high-speed Internet connections and smart phones have dramatically shifted the way people get their news. Ironically, news is still in strong demand. It's abundant, accessible and usually free on the Web." When searching about the delcine of the newspaper, every topic seems to lean toward the internet as the main reason. Even as I'm writing this, I'm getting my information from the internet to do so. I do think it's important that the newspaper industry stay in business, so it can be delievered to people who need it. But I have never been a big newspaper reader ad especially with the internet, I don't plan to start now.
I completely agree; if newspapers fail we are not only losing a valid source of news, but a tradition that has been passed on for years. Also there a greater chance that the information is skewed when retrieved from and internet source because not only does the author not have to worry about running the article through an editor, they can even remain anonymous in their writing. This can severely affect their credibility.
ReplyDeleteThe Stovall quote that Kristin mentioned that stated how websites already gear their content towards a particular audience is a great example of the more obvious bias associated with internet news sources, opposed to print. Although most individuals may like to hear their own opinion reiterated (just as Silverblatt has stated) we ultimately want the news to be objective. There is more credibility in a source "without distortion or personal bias."(Silverblatt)
The fact that authors of these internet news sources, such as blogs, do not have to face the possible consequences of untruthful reporting is extremely scary. There could be zero validity in their argument, yet their story is able to reach the masses. On one hand this is great in terms of freedom of speech and allowing the public to hear all sorts of opinions, yet they must realize that (for the most part) is all they are, opinions-not facts.