The Death of Printed News

Printed news' days are numbered. Once a lucrative business, newspapers are suffering from rapidly declining revenues from both unit sales and sales of advertising space. It's a generally accepted fact that citizens now read most of their news online and that this is the cause of the decline of printed media. This holds especially true with young people like me, who grew up alongside the internet.

As a young media consumer, I personally view newspapers as an outdated form of keeping up with the news. A self-described "old grouch" like Mortart may lament the decline of printed news in his blog Octogenarian (which implies through it's name alone that the man is at least 80), but his views do not seem to be shared by the younger generation. Newspapers may not have been all that expensive in the first place, but compared with free and convenient online news, papers just can't compete.

If you were to create a list of pros and cons weighing printed news against digital news, the list would overwhelmingly support digital news. Digital news can be conveniently located right on your computer, with important outlets like The New York Times and the BBC providing free and easy access to breaking news stories. These stories can be supported not only with photographs, but also with audio and video files, both of which are impossible to feature in a printed publication. For example, if you read an album review on a music media website like Pitchfork, you can instantly get a free listen-through of the album due to there partnership with lala.com, as shown in this album review. Not only that, but multiple sources can be quickly cross-referenced for accuracy without having to go to the closest news stand to purchase more papers. Internet articles also promote the democratic process since they allow users to post comments and discuss the topics at hand right there on the web page. This promotes citizen participation in the news and allows readers to expand their knowledge of topics beyond what is just written in an article. Journalism is not a one way street of communication (medium-to-viewer) anymore, but rather an interconnected web that everybody is involved with to varying degress.

This whole state of affairs seems to have printed press companies in a fit, predicting that this is the end for their companies since this trend shows no sign of stopping. With craigslist making classified sections obsolete and ad revenues falling, this is not terribly surprising. However, rather than acting like the worlds going to end and going through all sorts of desperate measures to get people to pick up the paper, they should really be focused on moving forward. One of these companies needs to take the initiative and establish a good business model for internet news. As Bob Dylan once sang "The times they are'a changin'" and they sure as heck won't change back. It's clear where the public demands its news, it seems futile, not to mention unprofitable, to try and fight that.