Spring Break
The Decline of Print media: Blame free access
Issue date: 4/30/09
The Pulitzer Prize Award for journalism was recently awarded even as the faltering newspaper industry struggles to survive. 2009 alone witnessed the end of newspaper editions of The Chicago Sun Times, The Rocky Mountain News, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (founded during the Civil War) and The Christian Science Monitor. (Both the Seattle paper and The Christian Science Monitor will remain in online editions).
Although many newspapers still manage to produce a healthy profit, the industry has been in a gradual, but consistent decline for the last 45 years. The current economic crisis has paved the way for bankruptcy. Hundreds of journalists have been laid off and circulation rates continue their descent. The new media - the Internet, cell phones, iPods, computers, movies, instant messaging, video games, the radio, PDAs and especially television - now all compete for our attention.
America's founding fathers believed freedom of the press to be important enough to include it in the First Amendment and could not envision a democracy without print. Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." However, the time when Americans received their news and information mainly from the printed word is now only a distant memory.
Perhaps the problem is not that readership is declining but instead that fewer people are paying to read. People have rapidly become accustomed to the notion of reading newspaper articles online for free. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, the Internet, which emerged this year as a leading source for campaign news, has now surpassed all other media except television as an outlet for national and international news. 40 percent of participants said they get most of their news about national and international issues from the Internet, which would mean that newspapers are actually reaching more readers than ever.
Although many newspapers still manage to produce a healthy profit, the industry has been in a gradual, but consistent decline for the last 45 years. The current economic crisis has paved the way for bankruptcy. Hundreds of journalists have been laid off and circulation rates continue their descent. The new media - the Internet, cell phones, iPods, computers, movies, instant messaging, video games, the radio, PDAs and especially television - now all compete for our attention.
America's founding fathers believed freedom of the press to be important enough to include it in the First Amendment and could not envision a democracy without print. Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." However, the time when Americans received their news and information mainly from the printed word is now only a distant memory.
Perhaps the problem is not that readership is declining but instead that fewer people are paying to read. People have rapidly become accustomed to the notion of reading newspaper articles online for free. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, the Internet, which emerged this year as a leading source for campaign news, has now surpassed all other media except television as an outlet for national and international news. 40 percent of participants said they get most of their news about national and international issues from the Internet, which would mean that newspapers are actually reaching more readers than ever.
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Bobby
posted 8/07/09 @ 2:40 PM EST
It may be also who has time to read and of course who wants to tan pay for it? And the mountains of sources as well. And now different people own various sources of the media so who can you trust to write the truth?
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