News paper supersized--To go

Is it really a surprise that newspaper sales are declining? As technology advances the economy weakens. Sure we want to be educated citizens seeking the truth from the media, but who wants to work for it? People are busy. They are either going to school, working multiple jobs and or have kids. We can check the weather, listen to music, watch movies, and go shopping online right from our phones. Do you really expect me to find time to sit down and read something other than a text book? I don’t think so. I’d much rather watch Count Down with Keith Olberman, The Daily show with John Stewart, or The Colbert report. At least then, I am entertained while learning and feeling somewhat productive.

We live in a fast paced society. Everyone is on the go. We eat in our cars and can get prescription medication from the drive through. Amazon.com has a “Kindle.” It’s a digital storage device that can down load digital books. It’s designed for people on the go. Readers can choose from over 260,000 books…”All available in under 60 seconds.” The device can even read to you. With convenience like this news papers may be in more trouble than we know. Not to mention that news papers are huh…made of paper which is not exactly green. Digital may be the way to go. If apple could come up with a digital device capable of receiving downloadable updates, we could save trees and avoid tossing out of date “kindles” into the trash. I would definitely buy one!

I agree with the rest of you. For the sake of tradition, our future careers and job stability, I truly hope news papers find a way to boost revenue. My only fear is that news papers will be flooded with advertisements and propaganda in an effort to make money just to stay afloat. If news papers operate on the same justification magazines use to show women scantily dressed and half emaciated --we are all in trouble. At that point will news papers really depict the news or will they be designed for entertainment purposes?
Call me a pessimist or a glass half empty kind of gal, but unless you can give me a news paper supersized and to go…I don’t see myself reading it until I’m 65 and retired. Then again with our economy and social security…I may be working until I’m 80.

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The Revoulution Will Not Be Printed!

I gotta side with Jarvis on this one.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-jarvis/to-newspaper-moguls-you-b_b_184309.html
The papers have had plenty of time to adapt to the readers, they are now forgetting that the customer IS always right. Once they started giving news away for free of course we we're not going to suddenly start paying for it?! NPR understands this well and those of us that listen have to roll our eyes every time pledge season comes around(ungrateful bastards that we are). When we ever did contribute we got to feel like we were in that elite but anonymous crowd. News papers have always been a status symbol. Does the loss of the paper shake up the status quo? You bet! Are they going to piss & whine & moan? You bet!
We need freedom of the press, but the news itself can not be free(that would be a gross misinterpretation of the Freedom of Infrmation Act). The only free news is propaganda. Obviously a government bailout for the papers is a conflict of interest... The problem is Democracy can only work with a well informed public and for the information to be good the journalists that provide it must paid. Surfing the news online is a better mechanism to consume the news; it almost forces me to find multiple perspectives of an event and not second geuss that my one paper is'nt leaving anything out. The medium inherantly lends itself to the forming ones own opinion based on the considering as many sides of the story as available.
We can only hope (& by we I mean those of us going into the field of journalism) that as consumers become more media savy they also become more more media literate. Jon Steward should be given a medal for work hes done to this end. A media literate auduiance is not going to be satisfied with lack of content in their news. Now the faith I'm putting in the public to become active news seekers probaly makes me an idealist. Then again, what revoulution diddnt was never based on the people putting their trust behind a movement?

http://tinyurl.com/cm6ubk
Well we all know that newspapers are circling the drain...And the environmentalist in me is perfectly fine with that. Though the journalist wants to curl up in bed with my cats and cry for my mommy. It seems every page I stumble to has something on the decline of journalism and newspapers. There is always an article, interview, or rant, such as the ones on AngryJournalist.com. Although I must say when I read through many of the rants and responses to rants (which completely defeats the point of the website), many of these proposed journalists have very poor grammar skills. Maybe this is why the newspaper is on its way out?

The clear answer to the problem is that newspapers need to find a new way to make money. Not always that easy, but the fellows over at East Bay Express seem to have found the answer

I hope that the newspapers do not stoop down to that level, though it seems that we're running out of options. Selling marijuana, weekly raffles, prostitution rings and the like clearly will not put the newspapers back up on their former pedestal.

In all seriousness, I am not afraid of the decline of the newspaper. Even with the Times in the middle of their own personal hell, the people of this nation will want to know what is going on, and the news is how that happens. Though printed journalism is on its way out, online media is still running strong. It will be only a matter of time before the big companies start charging for online viewing. Is it really so scary for us to move forward into the technological era, when paper is on its way out? With tools like YouTube, Blogger, Twitter and other forms of online communication, I'm truly shocked that there is so much hype over the lost of the eco-unfriendly printed papers. We have always evolved to move forward with the times, so why not this time? After Henry Ford came out with the Model T, horse drawn carriages were very quickly a thing of the past. So let us put the printed paper to rest, and start reading online.

Not the end, but a beginning

First watch…

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/224067/april-08-2009/phil-bronstein

All joking aside, the interview brings up some valid points. The death of the newspaper industry could also include the death of democracy as well. It is through journalism and newspapers that citizens get information about world news and politics which fuel the democratic process.

But wait…that may have been the case fifty years ago, but in today’s world things have changed. Is the death of the newspaper industry really the death of democracy? I don’t think so. If anything, the availably of free news via the internet has facilitated democracy. Anyone with access to a computer can instantly receive breaking news and engage with others through chat rooms, blogs, and comment walls. Discussions and arguments are built through the internet causing people to consider other beliefs and challenge others.

Phil Bronstein is almost nostalgic about old journalism days. Days where journalists uncovered controversy and scandals and allowed democracy to flourish through their work. He blames Google and other internet companies for stealing original journalism and allowing the public free access to the news which is apparently killing the newspapers. While this may be a factor in newspaper’s dwindling circulation, charging the public for news will only hurt democracy.

The solution is not to force people back to the way things were, but to move forward. Colbert is correct in saying that there is a solution in all of this—a window for newspapers to capitalize on. Times are changing, and they’re changing for the better. Newspapers need to get on board and learn to adapt.

WE determine what news we want to hear

The article I read was from Time Magazine and it mentioned a study done at Princeton University on what happens when a town loses its newspaper. Prior to reading the article, I didn't think newspapers honestly mattered that much. I still don't think the end of the newspaper is the end of democracy or our society, at all. I do think though, that we should pay attention to what is happening to newspaper organizations and realize that if they were all gone for good it would affect our society in some ways.

The study basically found that in communities where newspapers were shut down, people seemed to care less about how their town was governed--by not voting, and fewer people running for office to begin with. They found that this was less common in small communities compared to large ones. I'm guessing because in small towns it seems like most people talk on a regular basis and feel that they have the power to change issues in their community. The article also discussed how newspapers provide something unique that a news website like CNN.com can't, and that is local coverage. I work at a dry cleaners and during a typical 3-hour shift--rough, I know--I help about 7 customers. When I'm tired of working on homework, I actually enjoy reading the newspaper. Though I find most of the newspaper is extremely depressing with police reports shootings and deaths, for some reason I still read it! So basically, if I wasn't bored at work, I would not read the newspaper. I feel as though I get enough news on TV and online, but what about the generation that doesn't use the computer? If newspapers were shut down, it seems like senior citizens would be missing a vital part of their schedule. This might be stereotyping, but I know that my 65 year-old boss has to read the newspaper every morning. She loves reading the local stories and just the paper in general. I'm not saying every elder in our society has to read the newspaper, but because they grew up in a generation without the internet, they probably count on the newspaper being around. For my younger generation, the paper just doesn't matter as much because we grew up in a different time.

While the demise of the newspaper definitely has its negatives, I do not think we need to be worried about journalism, or our democratic society disappearing. If anything, it's only getting better. The term "citizen journalist" is becoming more common, referring to the fact that any citizen in our society can be a journalist. People actually want to read what their fellow citizens have to say, and it's great. We're moving away from the only credible sources being "the media" and whatever "the media" says is true, is correct. Now, WE determine what news we want to hear, when we want it, and how much of it we want. Of course we should make sure who were calling credible for receiving news in general, but I like the fact that there are so many websites allowing anyone to post their opinion on topics.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1885349,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1886826,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar

Will they ever go away?!

Contrary to Media Writing prophecies, I hate newspapers. Newspapers now only serve as the villain inside the ecosystem of the American Media Monster (and yes I do know it is capitalized!). Feel me straight though 'my' people, I'm calling the institution of Newspapers evil and the mechanics of it, but not the content - clearly.

I ask the Newspaper industry what can your paper, the tangible, offer me that my electronic sources of news can't? See Mr. Newspaper man, you've already lost me as well as the rest of my generation (At least the ones who are cognitively conscious enough to know that News exists). The death of your industry is, well, here. Your twice daily printing that is not delivered through my various computer screens is why I don't, and won't, like you. You see, I work three jobs - one being my own company - and go to school full-time; I have zero time to open your grotesquely large papers and begin paging through your advertisements searching for the News that I want to read, once again, searching for the news I want to read. You fill me up with 12-hour old 'News' that I've already digested and formed initial perspectives on. Until recently, my vision was quite poor and your see through pages and skimpy ink usage made it terribly hard to read your media, aggravating me more than the news! Until you blow my friggin mind with an awesome-ly new medium, I will continue my 10 minute on the hour search of my favorite online News sources that I complete within 5-1o minutes of starting, covering my wide awray of beliefs, perspectives, and meeting my immediacy.

Beyond your inability to compete with my generation's outlets Mr. Newspaper Man, you flex your depleting muscles to ensure that the little twig over the edge that you've caught onto stays firmly rooted - at all costs. I work for a professional racing team under the mission of reaching our audience ASAP with our news and you guessed it, proppaganda. I spam MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, blogspot, I use Press Release services, and ocasionally I'll send an article to the niche industry magazine to publish. Yet you Mr. Newspaper Man consider this amateur work, far-below your stature and style. You have even insitutionalized untangible devices limiting the public strength of these mediums so that your ego and stigma, to your belief's, are upheld. Your 2-dementional suffocation of the American Media Monster has got to end and will with the evaporation of your evilness.

'My' People, I hear, what about the century of Newspaper headlines bringing the world it's gravest and greatest news? How will that tradition and history be carried on? My answer is simple and already beautifully on display.

Mr. Newspaper man, even your one and only friend has left you for the digital affair, photography. Your menacing Stockholm Syndrome tactics on her [photography] have broken. Your last exclusiveness has left you. Sure your papers do run many of the same images as Generation-Y'ers have seen on 'the internet', but once again we saw them hours ago and already are back to watching Most Extreme Challenge on Spike! Tv. Photography has left you knowing that your inability to change would be your kryptonite.

Beyond the personification of all of this, I will forever cherish my Wisconsin State Journal front pages from 9/11, Shock and Awe 2003, 'Mission Acomplished', and the Bush/Cheney 2004 election front page. I comepletly understand the importance that Newspapers play in society, I feel mainly to give us those tangible shocking headlines coined with photos from the internet, and pray [well not really] that those tangible front pages see through to the end of man.

But, Mr. Newspaper Man, I give you the peace sign, blow you a kiss, drop my index finger and say 'PEACE'. (No Gym Class Hero's were hurt in this quote.)

The end of newspapers?

Nothing can be done about the demise of newspapers especially in the new era of technology and our crumbling economy. Even if newspapers were to go out of business (and that is the paper itself), news organizations will still be here. Those organizations will still offer news but just in a different medium which is the internet. The internet is becoming more efficient for citizens because it’s easily accessible to everyone. It’s fast and easy to locate within seconds if you know what you want.

The end of newspapers can’t be avoided as long as new technology emerges every so often. Citizens are getting more accustomed to the more efficient ways of getting things done faster. An example is that we work on the McDonalds system of having an efficient, universal and reasonable price set. Anybody in the world can go on the web and access news whether it be about other countries across the sea or across the country in matter of seconds for free. As our society upgrades in the world of efficiency we begin to consume things at a faster pace and want more of what we consume.

We can think on the positive and lighter note about where news reporting is going though. It’s not going into a bad place but just a faster and efficient way for citizens to access. A journalist’s job is to bring news to the citizens so it will make more sense to bring the news faster to them through a medium in which citizens can access in a matter of seconds. When people think of journalist they think of people who write for the newspapers, but as our society advances we will see journalists in different lights and angles. They just don’t write for papers, they write and report on tv, magazines and sometimes through photos.

Our beloved Stovall has a blog too...
http://jprof.blogspot.com/2009/02/demise-of-newspapers-means-better.html