Understanding the Inevitable: The Death of the Newspaper

The media tends to hold a bias position when it comes to the demise of the contemporary newspaper concept. Understandably, it is in their interest to attempt to sway public opinion in order to empathize with an archaic means of distributing news.

Am I upset? Not at all … I understand what is going on and do not pity those too stubborn to understand changing technology, and thus are being left behind.

Yet, in a society where corporate owned newspaper are treated as a business venture instead of its intended purpose- the fourth branch of government, responsible for holding our policy makers accountable of their actions regardless of party affiliation -I do not hold any sympathy for the death of the newspaper.

It is my understanding that what is happening to the broken system called a newspaper is a good thing for us, the people. Newspapers are treated as a neutral source of information that prints the most important stories to the general population. However, what is often forgotten is that the paper must also maintain their business aspect in order to stay profitable.

Sympathizers of the current model of newspapers, often those employed by the media system, claim that our society will suffer with the downfall of the newspaper. There will be too few sources of reporting, and the quality of the reporting papers will decline because of a lack of competition and experienced workforce. That point is well taken … but I dissent and add that if there was no alternative to the newspaper than such outcome should be cause for concern to the American people. But, this is not true.

You see … as the current model of newspapers fail in the information age where the general public expects up to the minute coverage of events, how can anyone compete that does not offer a dynamic means to communicate the ever changing landscape of information gathering.

I have to stress that the death of the contemporary newspaper is due to technology. The future of the newspaper lies in converting to an online medium source, such as blogs. This is no surprise as the major newspapers of the world have already begun the transition.

One can see a similar situation in the death of the movie rental industry. Does the fact that one can no longer enter a physical building and browse for 10 minutes for a movie selection in the United States mean that one can no longer rent this type of entertainment?

Not at all … on the contrary … this type of service has increased and all due to technology. People did not complain about the death of the retail location that contained a library of a select few movies. Instead, people embraced the concept of browsing a library, that far exceeded anything located in their nearby Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, on the Internet and setting up queues of movies they wish to see.

I see the movie rental industry changing in the coming 5 years from our contemporary model of waiting for a physical disc to arrive in the mail. Do not be surprised if you can just browse an endless library of movie selections via your television and watching the movie of your choice as fast you can enter your credit card information.

As for the newspaper, it will still exist as long as it is not stubborn about the means that it will be communicating the information to its audience. There was no death for the typewriter … just an improvement with computers and word processing software.

One must be as hopeful and excited for what will come from newspapers as their business model changes to survive in the Information Age.