Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Death Knell for Newspapers?

In his blog, former Mercury News reporter/columnist Dan Gillmor comments on the "slow implosion" of the newspaper industry, after the annoucement of major layoffs by The New York Times Company and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

It's not encouraging news for people who hope for a career in journalism. Gillmor writes:
"It's painful to watch a business I care so much about commit slow suicide this way. But the financial writing is increasingly on the wall for an industry that simply can't figure out how to handle its challenges.

"There will be a serious loss to society if daily newspapers -- or at least the community watchdog function they still fulfill, despite their well-chronicled flaws -- were to disappear or be disrupted while a new business model emerges. I don't know if we need newspapers (though I still read them avidly). We damn well need what newspapers do."

So what do you think? Do we really need newspapers? Does the newspaper industry have a role to play in the digital age? Or is it a dinosaur lumbering toward extinction?

And what's the impact on democracy if newspapers die?"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Like all other forms of old media newspapers are being phased out due to their lack of efficiency. The digital age has brought us much easier, cheaper, and faster methods for production and people are more than happy to trade the cumberson, time-consuming traditional methods of writing, editing, and layout for the new methods availabe on computers. Because of the availablility and convience of the internet, almost anyone can publish; which leads not to the death of democracy but to the birth of new forms of free speech.

Anonymous said...

I t has become easier to just go on the internet to find out my information on what is going on in the world, but it's always nice to pick up a newspaper and read through it. When your on the internet you tend to bypass areas that have no interest to you where as when you read a newspaper, you tend to read things that might not even interest you, but you tend to still read them because its something to do.