The Future of Newspapers

Over the past few months, we've seen several major newspapers fail throughout the United States.  This decline for the newspapers has been a few years coming, but has escalated with the struggling economic recession.  An interesting and shocking article appeared in Time Magazine documenting "The 10 most Endangered Newspapers in America."  While it has been obvious newspapers have been declining over the last few years, a new decline of some of the most historic papers in the country has displayed how troubling this new trend is.  Staples like the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado and the Baltimore Examiner have gone under, and some of the country's great regional dailies like the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Time, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer are in bankruptcy.

There is not an easy solution to prevent the decline of the American newspaper.  One major issue is the fact that classified sections, which generate a good portion of the income for newspapers, is not bringing in as much money as it used to.  Since readership in newspapers is dropping, advertisers are getting less 'bang for their buck' and are less willing to spend money.  While online news has exploded in popularity, newspapers have yet to find a way to generate the same income they could in print media.

One solution that is starting to rise across the country is converting resources to online.  Since most younger people get their news from Websites or television and the fasting growing demographic of people using the Internet is in the 45-and-up age group, it makes sense for newspapers to begin focussing resources online.

Some papers have stopped publication of the print product all together.  Others have slowly but surely transferred resources to online.  Since having a presence online means a paper has global reach, actual readership has the potential to significantly rise.  The question remains... How can newspapers earn money from suppling information on the Internet?

The key is to begin minimizing costs.  This can be done by obtaining and keeping employees that have several skill sets.  Instead of paying a reporter to write a story, a photographer to take pictures, a videographer to shoot video and an online publisher to post content online, newspaper should train employees to be able to complete all of these tasks.  In essence, newspapers will have one person paid to do the work it previously took five people to do.  This will impose a greater burden of more work on employees, but it is a needed sacrifice to help ensure the survival of the journalist.  The negative to this is newspapers will have a 'Jack of all trades' on staff, but that person could never master any single job.  This means the overall product delivered by the newspaper has the potential to decline.  

At this point however, I feel having journalists perform several duties might be the only way to save journalism.  When newspapers are able to find a way to make enough money off the Internet to support the news operation, having specialized employees is the way to go. Until then, newspapers have to do what they can with what they have.  That includes saving jobs, producing the best product possible with limited resources and keeping the industry alive to perform the watchdog and informative jobs that are essential to our way of life.

Here are two links that discuss the troubles facing American newspapers.  The first is a Time article discussing 10 major newspapers that might fail in the near future, and the other talks about the death of today's newspapers and some ways companies might be able to save the product.

Time article on papers likely to fail:  www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1883785,00.html

Article on the death of newspapers and how to save journalism: www.reclaimthemedia.org/journalistic_practice/death_and_life_great_american_2012

- Dennis Culver