Bad News For Newspapers

Posted by Mark Radulich on 07.11.2008

Print media is going down...slowly but surely.


This is the end, the end my friend, the end...

Predictions were made a while back that the print newspaper industry would eventually become a thing of the past for a variety of reasons.  Everything is a business and the trend is that once certain advances are made in technology or competition offers a better product, you either evolve or you become extinct.  The news industry itself has evolved but in doing so, it's left the granddaddy of all media, the print newspaper, in the dust.

Much like my discussion of entertainment media such as movies and music, physicality has given way to the formless digital.  As the above video indicates, the print newspaper industry cannot compete with it's digital competition.

If we're being honest, this is both good and bad.

For one and the probably the most obvious reason why this is bad is that the loss of an entire medium means a significant loss in jobs.  As much fun as it is to pick on print journalists (for their shameless promotion of bias, lazy work and all around elitist attitude) , lost jobs are lost jobs.  This is never a good thing in the short run and if those folks can't be repositioned into other meaningful work then they are yet another group that becomes a strain on our already faltering economy.  Some will inevitably become teachers but they face rather stiff competition from those people who are already pursuing an education career.  Some may be able to write books and live comfortably off their royalties, adding speaking tours and book signings to their repertoire.  Others may be able to stick it out a little longer in smaller papers that will soon die off as well.  Still others may make the transition to some digital news format or become one of the never ending stream of cable news talking heads.  But the rest may have to start all new careers.  Either way, the economy usually convulses when an entire industry goes belly-up.

Don't get me wrong, I love digital news.  I simply adore the fact that I can Google just about any topic and find articles on it in my underpants at 6:00 AM before I go to work.  Three years ago when I first started blogging, Iran Mania (a source for Iranian news in English) was bookmarked into my browser, so I am not bemoaning the inevitable eclipse of print news by digital news.  Access to all the world's news is obviously a good thing.  God willing when Generation Y grows up and cuts back on the social networking in favor of paying attention to what is happening in the world, having a seemingly infinite source of news at your fingertips will have a net effect of making our society that much smarter and more well-informed (crosses fingers).

Of course the other problem with print news eventually going down in flames is that traditionally it has been print journalists that have done the most intensive investigative reporting.  All of the really big stories (many of which become books) started as expensive and time consuming investigative journalism pieces.  They were funded once upon a time by print newspapers.  When that well dries up, who or what entity will absorb the cost of sending an investigator out for possibly months, if not years, on end to track down a complex story.  The question that remains unanswered is what becomes of this necessary branch of journalism?  Will it fall to the TV news networks?  If so, won't that particular content be somewhat adulterated given how TV tends to dumb ideas down for mass consumption and the all-powerful nightly ratings.  I mean, Bill O'Reilly only has so much time to report he can't do it all : )

Bloggers do the journalism world some good but unless you are independently wealthy or you happen to have some piece of information unknown to all else, we citizen journalists are all standing on the shoulders of actual professional journalists and as such cannot replicate Bill Gertz.

Again, I'm all for changes in the news and especially competition therein.  But we should all not simply stand quietly while the print media burns in a pyre without asking how this affects the way in which valuable solid news is made known to us.