The demise of the newspaper industry is inevitable. We live in a culture where we want everything now - and online news allows just that. The immediacy online journalism allows is quite fitting in our fast paced lives and the newspaper industry can’t quite compete. Why pay for information in print form when you could get the same content online free of charge? The recession has taken a serious toll in our daily lives, and even the biggest names in the US newspaper industry are feeling the recession’s bite.
We live in a fast-paced society where we’ve gotten the notion that we need information and need it NOW. Our thirst for the here and now has consumed us, and with technologies such as the internet and mobile devices that enable web browsing why would we want it any other way? The Newspaper Association of America conducted a study and found that Newspaper web sites attracted more than 74 million monthly unique visitors on average in the third quarter of 2009, more than one-third (38 percent) of all Internet users. As more and more newspapers started making their content available on the internet free of charge consumers have taken advantage of the spread and there seems to be no turning back.
Newspapers get their income from two sources: readers and advertisers. With more and more newspapers publishing their print online, there has been a major downfall of readers with paid subscriptions. A BBC News article talks about the demise of the US newspaper in general along with examples of well known names, such as the New York Times, and their hardships – struggling to service debts of some $400 million and having to mortgage it’s gleaming new headquarters (built in 2007) to increase their cash flow. Free content online has put a dent in the income of printed news, but the fact of the matter is, nothing is going to improve until the economy recovers.
Technologies such as iPods and cellular phones now allow consumers to have access to, what seems to be, an endless pool of information. We live in a world where we want information at rapid speed –and for cheap. Until newspapers can configure a way to compete with our hunger for information and the holes in our pockets while making revenue, the demise of the newspaper will only continue.
I completely agree with you and your statements. The fact that the American culture now runs at such a fast pace has undoubtedly affected how we want to receive our news. Americans want their news almost immediately and want it with a click of a button. The real deal breaker of newspapers is the cost. Why pay more for something that is less proficient in a society that is based around efficiency.
ReplyDeleteWith a struggling economy it is also no wonder why Americans find free online news so appealing. Why would anyone pay for something they can get for free, with less effort? Not only that, but most Americans don’t even need to go anywhere to access online news, they can do it from the comfort of their own car, desk, or wherever else they may be. The majority of Americans today have cell phones and a great deal of those cell phones have Internet access. Therefore most Americans do not even need to go anywhere or do anything to gain access to breaking news. They can simply grab their cell phone and see what breaking news occurred only a few minutes ago.
Stovall states that online news has certain qualities that print news just cannot compete with. He states "those qualities are immediacy, flexibility, permanency, capacity and interactivity." Benefits such as these means that there is little reason for print news, especially when online news is free. Information on the Internet is infinite and a reader could find almost anything they want with a little typing and effort. With that said, print news is extremely limited. The reader pays to get twenty-some pages of information, some of which they may not even be interested in. The Internet allows readers to find more specialized news sites that often offer more of an opinion than print news articles.
The only way for print news to gain popularity again would be for the economy to grow; like you said. However, even "The New Yorker" argues that it will be hard for print news to ever gain the audience that online news has attained. If people do buy a newspaper they often can only afford to buy one, but online news allows readers to access any kind of news they want and not to be limited to one certain newspaper. So, even if the economy were to grow, the advantages of online news will probably still outweigh those of print news. Online news has even allowed readers to give instant feedback and share articles with friends. This constant interaction provokes more conversation and thought than traditional news; allowing readers to become more involved then ever before. Print news will never be able to accomplish such interaction. No matter how hard print news may try to compete with such interaction, it is hard to compete with the ability for the readers to voice their own opinions instantly. Most people want to be heard and want to read what other people think and the Internet allows for readers to see a lot of feedback. I believe that the only way for newspapers to survive is for them to embrace the Internet, because they will never be able to compete with it.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_alterman?currentPage=1