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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
Cephus said:
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.
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Newspapers that hope to survive really do have to have "timely" updates, and major metro ones do. My local news sources do not, and I just go crazy when "breaking news" of serious import to my community isn't updated for eight or more hours. Such an outrage.
 
Pinkie said:
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.
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What on earth are you talking about? What, you think journalists for online publications just work for free? You think local papers don't have websites? Hell, even some of the smallest papers have websites these days. You'll still see your reporters, and they'll still dig up dirt.

The problem with lazy journalism that you're talking about has nothing to do with the internet, and probably predates it entirely. That is a side effect of the increasing amount of elbow-rubbing journalism has been doing with politics.

And that vigor is slowly being reborn - thanks to the internet - in the form of bloggers. Bloggers who the papers are now hiring, in some cases. Even the New York Times is taking some of them on. And in many cases, they school the trained journalists in terms of being honest reporters.

Hiring people as journalists who are coming from outside professions has always been a unique trait of journalism, and the blogger is the newest iteration.

The internet and the death of the daily is exactly what will bring back that vigor you miss so much, if anything can.
 
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Hard to imagine something like NYT going under, but I don't think paper versions will survive, although some college papers might for quite a while. They can use work-study funds while being non profit, and some are subsidized by alumni or student fees. Most copies get distributed to multiple readers as they're just left in class for the next person, limiting costs.
 
nota bene said:
Newspapers that hope to survive really do have to have "timely" updates, and major metro ones do. My local news sources do not, and I just go crazy when "breaking news" of serious import to my community isn't updated for eight or more hours. Such an outrage.
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The problem is, print simply cannot be as fast as the electronic media. You can see basic information on a major story online within a matter of minutes. It's going to take hours at a minimum for print newspapers to produce their "update" and even longer to deliver it to your house. By that time, most of these stories are long dead.
 
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