CLASS RESPONSE: Why We Shouldn't Bury Newspapers Just Yet

Heading to a more recently discussed topic, for my second response, I will talk about newspapers, their decline, and how they are still (hopefully) going to survive.

Over the past few years, the number of regular subscriptions to newspapers have gone down by some significant percents, according to a report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. As you can see in the above graph, the paid circulations have dropped at a steady amount since 1990,  save for the weekday morning circulation, which appears to have stayed relatively close, if not gotten higher than the amount of circulation in 1990. This is because of many reasons, such as:

• the spread of other forms of news outlets, such as through the internet, through broadcast journalism, through podcasts and radio, through social networking sites, through smartphone, etc.
• the rising cost of ink and paper to print newspapers on

Of course, these two reasons sound simple enough to control, but they are very big problems for the print journalism industry. The internet has alienated the idea of print journalism. Now, when people want to know the news, they can get texts sent to their phone about current events. No longer are the days when people searched through their newspapers to find information. Stories can be found at the click of the button, at the blink of an eye.

So what do newspapers have going for them?

• Newspapers have more diversified content than any other media outlet, as it reaches a wider and more diverse audience. (x)
• Newspapers are far more credible than any other media outlet, as anything published is guaranteed to be authentic and well-researched.(x)
• Newspapers are right there in front of you to save and keep with you to reference or to hang it on a wall or something.
• Newspapers are affordable, available to people for sometimes cheaper than a dollar, depending on where you get them.
  
• Newspapers do not need to be read in order. You can read stories out of sequence without losing comprehension.
• Newspapers are user-friendly--the only thing you need is literacy, not internet connection, a smartphone, a TV, etc.
• Newspapers further research their topics in order to present more facts to the reader because they have a larger space than other outlets.
• Newspapers are favoured by older individuals, because of their respect to traditional journalism.

So the final question is this: is this enough to save newspapers? Right now, we just have to wait and see. But for me, at least, I feel that newspapers aren't going anywhere for a while.