Newspaper industry caught in positive feedback loop

Posted Jul 21st 2008 5:46PM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: Newspapers

Some commentators are mourning the decline of the newspaper as web-based news rises, lamenting that quality, standards, and depth of research are going the way of the hula hoop.

But here's the problem: as newspapers lose circulation, they cut back on newsroom staff, and then the quality, standards, and depth of research decline.

A new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism's study, called "The Changing Newsroom: What is Being Gained and What is Being Lost in America's Daily Newspapers" looked at the changing face of newsrooms and found that stories have gotten shorter, and only 5% of editors felt they could predict what the newsroom would look like in just five years.

But I wonder if the opposite is true: as websites continue to take market share away from the newspapers and have the resources to make considerable investments, will web-based journalism become better than newspapers? It seems likely.

If that's the case, then all the complaining about the death of the newspaper is misplaced. The sooner it dies and consolidates onto the internet, the sooner we'll have high quality journalism available for free, online, at our fingertips.

Tags: inthenews, newspapers

Print this

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

7-21-2008 @ 6:58PM

big brother said...

computers are evil. give me any local paper anyday

7-21-2008 @ 7:08PM

Sergio said...

I strongly agree with this article. Newspaper journalists need to adapt to the changing environment caused by the internet. If someone here is interested, the domain name NewspaperJournalist.com would be ideal for professionals in this field looking to make the move to the internet. It is for sale right now at: http://www.WebsiteDestination.com/newspaperjournalist.com
- Cheers.

7-21-2008 @ 8:25PM

steve said...

Looks like the comment from Sergio is nothing but SPAM advertising a service. Something you are far less likely to see from a newspaper website. Bloggers may have lower costs but most don't have the connections into their community that community newspaper have.

I predict the slow downfall of bloggers for local news as these people realize that reporting news is more than ripping off from the local newspaper website with a few words of comments if any. Selling ads is the name of the game and without a connections into the market they are likely unable to continue for the long term. Let 'em try. I'm already seeing a slow down any maybe even a decrease.

PS: Google Adsense and other easy solutions are unlikely to generate enough revenues to support more and the content stealing most of these guys do. No way will it support real Journalism.