“The blogosphere has had its share of news breaks, but absent a functioning mainstream media to annotate, it could be pretty darn quiet out there.” wrote David Carr, in the article Mourning Old Media’s Decline.
In this article he sums up the decline of newspapers, and magazines that has been highlighted most recently by Gannett, who happens to be the nation’s largest newspaper company planning to lay off 10 percent of their newspapers staffers.
Many reasons are given for the decline including the economy and the decline of advertising revenue.
CNNMoney.com invites us to Read all about it...but not in your newspaper, saying “According to figures by PriceWaterhouse Coopers, between 2005 and 2010 the U.S. newspaper industry will go from a $60 billion to a $50 billion industry, as measured by revenue.”
I think 50 billion dollars is still a lot, but apparently not enough to keep things how they were.
Two more quotes from these articles stood out to me.
“Bob Iger, the CEO of Walt Disney, was asked what he thought about the newspaper industry's future. In so many words, he basically said that if the newspaper didn't exist and someone tried to create it, you'd be hard-pressed to dispute the appeal of a product that delivered the world to your doorstep every morning in a smartly-produced package. He then noted, with some relief, that Disney briefly owned newspapers but unloaded them more than a decade ago-largely to Knight Ridder.”
“At the recent American Magazine Conference, one of the speakers worried that if the great brands of journalism — the trusted news sources readers have relied on — were to vanish, then the Web itself would quickly become a “cesspool” of useless information. That kind of hand-wringing is a staple of industry gatherings. But in this case, it wasn’t an old journalism hack lamenting his industry. It was Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google.”
I guess my real question is with all these reporters and newspaper staffers being fired how long will it be until anyone notices the difference in news quality, or has it already happened?
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I like what the Disney CEO said. I see the newspaper as such a gift, it's just wonderful to get the world delivered to your doorstep like that. I love how I can just stuff my favorite articles in my purse and save them for later instead of having to lug around my laptop and wait for the internet to come around and so forth. I think there are a lot of people that still love newspapers in that way. I also think you're right that news needs a standard like the paper. Sure, it's great to have commentary all over the blogosphere, but without unbiased news in the paper, will people have much substantial material to chat about?
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