The Death of Newspapers and The Future of Journalism

The daily local newspaper will soon become a quaint relic of the analog age, displaced by electronic media and instantaneous coverage of news events available to anyone at zero cost to the news consumer.  How can a mainstay of local communities and even national news organizations remain in business, and how can they support the one essential role of newspapers — investigative journalism?

Although many rue the loss of a local or national newspaper out of nostalgia, the service of informing the public of newsworthy events will continue through many other media; in fact, it is fair to say that most individuals and communities are overwhelmed with news.  It is not the news that people will miss so much as the newspaper.  However, the newspaper itself is outdated in today’s society — why wait 24 hours or more for a “story” when one can learn about the significant event almost as it happens through live newsfeeds from independent reporters, bloggers, and other individuals posting not just a written account, but pictures, videos, and opinion all within minutes or hours of the event occurring.  Thus, there will not be a dearth of news delivered to news consumers.

News is also just like any other consumer good.  It is subject to a competitive marketplace of supply and demand.  As the cost of supplying news has dropped dramatically with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices, and the means to transmit rich media over them, the concept of charging subscribers for a static, written report, and picking up the hard costs of human delivery compared to electronic delivery, one can see why newspapers might go the way of the milkman. 

The main loss from the shuttering of newspaper companies could be investigative journalism.  Reporters who were on salary at a newspaper who could spend months or years investigating a story of public corruption, cronyism, official misdeeds, egregious violations of law, and the like will arguably be fewer, and it is possible that only a few superlative investigative journalists will survive the decline of the newspaper industry.  Clearly, journalism is going through some profound changes.  The transformation of investigative journalism will be one of them. 

It is certain that news will still be reported, but the suppliers of news will change.  Most newspapers will not survive.  Those that do will be small local newspapers that can make a profit on delivering a free newspaper paid for by advertising and some major national newspapers that cover a particular aspect of the news extraordinarily well.  Some newspapers might survive by becoming charitable public benefit non-profit organizations that will solicit donations for survival and perhaps even amass an endowment to sustain the publication of a newspaper.  The national papers that survive may be the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and perhaps USA Today.  These papers are unique in their own way, even though their print publications are suffering from subscriber attrition.  These three have very rich online presences, and other revenue streams that flow from their newspaper operations, such as selling photographs, books, and cementing agreements with hotels, libraries, and businesses for stable revenues.  The Wall Street Journal also charges for its online site.