Death of the News Paper

It is no secret that the newspaper business has been on the down fall for some time now. Small newspapers and even some large ones have been shutting down due to the lack of profitability in the industry. “Newspapers are getting wiped out in part because they didn’t realize they were in the information business” (Lyons). Where is everyone getting there information if they are not buying newspapers? Today Americans don’t want to go out and spend money, on a newspaper all the news a person could ask for is in their home and even in their hands. Internet media is not only free but convenient. With this new age source of news comes the potential to abolish media censorship. It is probably time or close to it for the complete transition away from newspapers into the new age world of Internet media.

It costs more to print a newspaper than it will sell for. The way the newspaper companies would make their money was in advertising. People and businesses would pay them money to post an ad about whatever they wanted in the newspaper. Today there is more efficient and free ways of promoting a product or service. The classifieds have been replaced with craigslist or tag sale websites. Businesses who used newspapers to advertise are finding it more profitable and easier to just create their own website. This is not good for newspaper companies. If it is easier to advertise online then people are not going to buy the ad space that is an important part of a newspapers profit because it is financially smarter not to.

Time and money management are very important part of most people’s lives. Life is a lot more fast paced lives then in the past. Why would anyone take the time to stop at a store, buy a newspaper, read through it looking for specific topics, and then physically have to discard of it when done? Now a days you can use your cell phone to instantly find what is needed. Smart phones make staying connected with the news an up to the second thing rather than waiting a day for a paper. A rational thinker would prefer Internet media over hard copy newspapers due to convenience.

Most newspapers don’t give you the full story. After the story is written it will go through a series of editors who will decide on what will be used for the story in the paper. They make changes, cut things out, and even take a bias opinion on certain topics. By the time the reader gets the article it is usually not the full story. It has been twisted into an image of what the newspaper company wants it to portray. While the article will most likely have facts and not be composed of lies, it may not have all the facts. This will allow the newspaper company to persuade the reader to whichever ideology that is their bias on the topic. With Internet media readers can quickly check sources and compare different sources to get all the facts and eliminate bias. If one website might be giving you a twisted story just go to a different site to try and get a better one.

As a newspaper reader and collector seeing the transition to internet media is painful. The history that comes with the newspaper industry alone is too important to the evolution of this country to just give up on. Although the fact is newspaper industry is getting swallowed up by the far more beneficial and trendy pandemic of digital media. Times are changing at a rapid rate and as technology evolves so will the way people operate. If it is easier to go on the web to find information then that’s what people will do. It’s obvious that technology is going to eventually take over the media industry as a whole and you can probably expect that to happen sometime in the near future. You can’t stop technology from advancing but you can adapt to it.