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Do You Think Newspapers Will Survive?

Will American cities continue to have newspapers?

  • Yes

    Votes: 7 31.8%
  • No

    Votes: 13 59.1%
  • Maybe, but only if.....

    Votes: 2 9.1%

  • Total voters
    22

Pinkie

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The New Orleans local paper recently stopped publishing daily, and will convert itself to a three-times a week community type media. The company that owns it also owns my local paper, and I was wondering: do you think such daily papers will continue to exist?

What do you see (if anything) that they offer your community no internet site can?
 
The New Orleans local paper recently stopped publishing daily, and will convert itself to a three-times a week community type media. The company that owns it also owns my local paper, and I was wondering: do you think such daily papers will continue to exist?

What do you see (if anything) that they offer your community no internet site can?

Heightened coolness factor. People who read their papers over their morning coffee look more mature than people who scroll down a web page to get their news.

Pretty much the only thing that a website "can't" provide as well as a newspaper is that it doesn't draw as much attention toward articles you would normally bypass.
 
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Will we continue to have vinyl records? The content, news and advertising, will exist but the media will likely change.
 
The New Orleans local paper recently stopped publishing daily, and will convert itself to a three-times a week community type media. The company that owns it also owns my local paper, and I was wondering: do you think such daily papers will continue to exist?

What do you see (if anything) that they offer your community no internet site can?

No, I don't see them continuing for very long.

Only those older than the Baby Boomers will keep reading papers - anybody younger will HAVE to adapt to the changes in technology. And, quite frankly, online outlets can operate much cheaper than paper operations can - as long as they can monetize their operations good enough, that is.
 
Pretty much the only thing that a website "can't" provide as well as a newspaper is that it doesn't draw as much attention toward articles you would normally bypass.

That and it's hard to wrap stuff in your laptop. :mrgreen:

They'll probably always be around, but the ones who don't diversify to other media will be boutique papers.
 
It's a shame in my opinion. I understand that the advantages of digital as a medium ultimately make it the better choice, but I will always prefer a hard paper copy rather than reading the same thing on a tablet or laptop.
 
they'll be around for a while because many people just like the format. when you think about it, it's quite amazing that vinyl records have survived, and given that basically everyone has a computer, that paper books are still popular.

the advantage of the paper is that you can read it without electricity, and many of us use the paper for other things after we're done reading.

as for city papers, i think we'll see fewer of them. larger papers like the NYT and USA Today will probably last longer.
 
The New Orleans local paper recently stopped publishing daily, and will convert itself to a three-times a week community type media. The company that owns it also owns my local paper, and I was wondering: do you think such daily papers will continue to exist?

What do you see (if anything) that they offer your community no internet site can?


Depends on what continue means...forever ? no...but they arent going extinct any time soon, thats my opinion
 
An iPad is a bitch to read when sitting on the throne So I don't think papers will go extinct.
 
they'll be around for a while because many people just like the format. when you think about it, it's quite amazing that vinyl records have survived, and given that basically everyone has a computer, that paper books are still popular.

the advantage of the paper is that you can read it without electricity, and many of us use the paper for other things after we're done reading.

as for city papers, i think we'll see fewer of them. larger papers like the NYT and USA Today will probably last longer.

I don't know you can say that vinyl records have survived. Very few albums actually put out vinyl records these days. In fact, few albums get put on CDs nowadays what with digital downloads.

Papers will last only as long as businesses can make their profit margins on them. When that ends, so will the business.
 
Yes, I think newspapers will disappear into electronic media, and it's a damned shame. Then again, I'm old, set in my ways and thankful I don't have a birdcage that needs lining.

The Sacramento Bee, one of the state's biggest newspapers has over the years cut down the size of its paper, tripled the advertising-to-news ration, changed to using paper not much thicker than tissue that is poorly cut, with wrinkles cutting through the newsprint, making it illegible. The handwriting is literally on the wall for daily newspapers, I'm afraid.
 
Yes, it's inevitable. Papers will still continue to exist, I'm sure. Hell, straight razor manufacturers continue to exist. But merely existing doesn't mean survival, necessarily. Survival, in a business sense, means lucrative. Papers aren't lucrative as it is, and eventually, they'll disappear in the sense that they'll no longer be a common sight out and about. They're already far less visible out on the town than they were, say, 5 or 10 years ago.

You can't really compare it to books. The e-book model is still in an extreme degree of flux. It's still emerging, from a workability perspective. But digital news media is already workable, and far more so than hard copy papers are these days.

It's much more comparable to music, where a clear industry model has emerged and is largely taking over the market.

I can tell you that almost no one of my generation reads physical newspapers, apart from small scale local tablets and pamphlets (and even those are getting harder to push). I can also tell you a lot of people in my generation don't even own CD's anymore.

I read all my news online, and get all my music online. I am part of a paper that does go to print, and I love fresh ink on my fingers. I also own a record player, and a modest vinyl collection that I adore for its sound quality.

But those are little pleasures. Things you enjoy when you remove yourself from the technological reality of the world you live in.

If I want walking music, I sure as hell don't bust out a CD player - I plug in to my phone. And if I want to actually read news, I sure as hell don't pop a few quarters into the corner stand - I pull up Pulse on my phone or tablet.

If I want to see how our audience feels about the issue we just put out, I don't look for letters in our mail box, because there won't be any. I check the comments on the website, analytics, or my email. That is where almost all of our feedback will be, because that's how most of our readers are accessing us.

We've been cutting our print run pretty steadily all year, and we still have left over papers in the stands, even as our hits on the website continue to climb. As a matter of fact, the reduction in our print run and the increase in our online presence are very strongly negatively correlated. The readers who have left us on the stands have joined us online.

It's just change, guys. It's not a shame. Who misses the town crier? No one, because having your own paper is more accessible. And in 50 years, who will miss print newspapers? No one, because a global online presence is more accessible. That is the point of journalism.

I will miss ink on my fingers, and I've gone down to the printer more than once and taken a nice, long look at our paper being run off. We have plating and color tests in the office as souvenirs. Because I know I may not get another chance to see it.

But I won't shed a tear when it's gone. More people than ever have access to news, and the more the newspapers die and reincarnate online, the more accessible it becomes. That's what matters.
 
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I think so, but it becomes more of a matter of presentation of the content and the way you would structure the business upon that. People point to bloggers or social media being the way forward, but they are typically derivatives of newspaper content to begin with.
 
Some of the older more respected papers might survive long-term. But I don't think that the majority of them will.
 
I think newspapers will die off, and it worries me. All those reporters who used to dig up dirt on my city hall will not have jobs. There's something intangible that will be lost when people in my community can't look to a single source for news, or expect their neighbors to learn about a funeral in the family from one. We'll be less of a community in some ways.

There are a few national nonprofits who're trying to make a market for investigative journalism, but they can't possibly recreate the vigor with which journalists pursued corruption in the 1930's....or the 1970's.
 
Newspapers are quickly becoming obsolete. I imagine that they will continue to exist, but only in digital form and many of the free sites will soon become subscription based.
The Los Angeles Times used to be a great paper, but over the last five years, it has shrunk to almost nothing. I used to spend 3-4 hours reading the Sunday paper, today I'm lucky if I spend more than 30 minutes....there just isn't anything to the paper anymore.
 
No, it's on it's last leg right now. Won't survive the next decade.
 
The New Orleans local paper recently stopped publishing daily, and will convert itself to a three-times a week community type media. The company that owns it also owns my local paper, and I was wondering: do you think such daily papers will continue to exist?

What do you see (if anything) that they offer your community no internet site can?

Nothing, Pinkie, except ink-stained fingers and recycling issues. And glasses, LOL.
 
The New Orleans local paper recently stopped publishing daily, and will convert itself to a three-times a week community type media. The company that owns it also owns my local paper, and I was wondering: do you think such daily papers will continue to exist?

What do you see (if anything) that they offer your community no internet site can?
I think they will be whittled down to only a handful, and will have to be more regional and/or national in nature, yet still identifying with larger metropolitan areas.
 
Honestly, we haven't subscribed to a paper in well over a decade, all of our news comes from online and newspapers will continue to fail because they cannot keep up with the news cycle. By the time the paper comes out the following morning, the news is already old.
 
What about magazines?
 
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