“As you may have noticed, newspapers have had a rough 2009. But you may not quite appreciate the magnitude of the collapse.
So far this year:
* 105 newspapers have been shuttered.
* 10,000 newspaper jobs have been lost.
* Print ad sales fell 30% in Q1 ’09.
* 23 of the top 25 newspapers reported circulation declines between 7% and 20%.
What happened?
The economy collapsed and advertising budgets went with it, accelerating a process already underway: the Internet’s erosion of the entire newspaper industry.” (Read more from businessinsider.com)
Don’t let these sob stories fool you. We are in a golden age of journalism. The old guard is just upset that they losing money and influence. Telling the truth is beginning to matter.
its not just newspapers, its all print media. how do you plan to make a living when no one wants to pay for books? where are you going to get half the articles you link to when there arent big media companies producing news (or “news”)?
not that big media is necessary, but down just celebrate their demise and expect that the problems they are facing wont face you and other bloggers/writers.
Just like television didn’t kill radio, the internet et al. will not kill print media. We’ll just (deservedly) diminish their influence and shake out some of their worst.
no its not the same – television didnt circumvent the funding mechanism for programming, the web does. its not a matter really of print vs web, its a matter of how are you going to pay the bills when no one wants to pay for content. people need to be thinking very hard about new payment mechanisms. while i would welcome the divorce of news content from advertising revenue (and just a decrease in advertising everywhere in life), pay for conent schemes are going to be a huge transition a lot of people wont want to make, and will also be a huge headache for bloggers as linking to articles will be somewhat useless unless people have memberships to everything. donation funding like npr does is another possibility, but i have a hard time imagining it being plausible for a lot of organizations.