Last week the Denver post went on sale. When I heard that I was thinking to my self "really a whole newspaper for sale?". Even more interesting is that in 2002 the Post merged with the Rocky Mountain News so that they were not competing for readership.
So really the question here is what is happening to these news papers that they can no longer stay afloat let alone thrive as they once did? The obvious answer is that people are getting their news from more convenient sources; TV, and the Internet. But TV has been around for a while now and papers were still doing well, I guess readers wanted something TV couldn't offer, like more in depth coverage of local news, human interest stories, classifieds even. But now the Internet can do all that and more in far less time, since readers can search exactly what they want to read, and for no extra charge above what they already pay for Internet service.
What does this mean for us as consumers of news in the future? I think the printed news will eventually be extinct. And if we are not careful so will the printed word all together.
Just think of how we take pictures and share them with our families and friends now. Most of us have digital cameras, we snap our pics, upload them to our computers and email away. This is so much more convenient than buying film and then going to the store to get our pictures developed and because of that convenience we all do it. But what is the down side here? Well what about the physical archive the printed pictures represent. How many times have each of us been visiting a relative or been helping mom or grandma clean out a closet or attic and ran across a box full of old photos? And sure to follow are stories that would have been long forgotten if not for that physical archive, there forgotten in a box just waiting to jar a memory to life. How will that happen now? Will our grandkids be going through our old thumb drives, flash drives, hard drives? Will they stumble upon our myspace in 40 years? Are we losing something here?
And what about other physical archives? Printing books costs a lot of money but publishing on the Internet is virtually free, I didn't pay for this blog and neither are you paying to read my drivel. How long will it be until paper publishing is extinct? And then since reading is so bothersome we will just wait until an audio book of the material is published and just listen our way to knowledge and entertainment. What will that mean for our civilization? Will we eventually become illiterate? Will we stop seeing a need to teach our children to read?
Makes one think doesn't it?
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