The Death of Newspapers. Or Not.


Blogs are Killing Newspapers

In a world of increasing online consumption, it is clear that newspapers are a dying breed. As are any of your so called “traditional” sources. Television is being replaced by Hulu, iTunes and DVR. The value of the advertising dollar has decreased due to the lack of actual human eyeballs on a product.

Advertisers, as the primary funding source of traditional media, are pulling their money out and pushing it into the online space – blogs, video content, etc. The value of these online properties continues to expand while the notoriety of the traditional sources continues to diminish.

In the past 6-12 months, many of the juggernaut newspapers companies that, in some cases, have been around for a century or more, have begun to take steps toward complete shutdown. Examples of this are the New York Times Company who have taken steps to mortgage their headquarters in downtown New York City in an effort to raise several hundred million dollars in cash.

Other companies, such as the Tribune Company, have also filed for bankruptcy protection, placing into question the futures of major American newspapers such as the LA Times, Baltimore Sun and Chicago Tribune. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer may die very, very soon if no one steps up to buy up that asset from the Hearst Corporation.

Meanwhile, blogs continue to be created and the aggregation of online media content, many in the form of blogs, continues plodding onward via tools that offer aggregation functionality, such as FriendFeed, Google Reader and Facebook.

To make matters worse for newspapers, many of the top journalists are leaving their posts at these news outlets, whether willingly or unwillingly, and beginning their own popular blogs. When notable journalists like Jay Rosen do more via their blogs than through traditional means, maybe it’s time to rethink how journalism has always been done?