The Decline and Fall of the Newspaper Industry in the Age of Pixels

by elpresidente | 8:02 am, January 13, 2010 | Comments Off

Sometimes a picture says it all:

The question is, where will you get your news?

Blogs can only fill part of the gap, as the issue goes far beyond just economic or political reporting. Bloggers still look to genuine newsgathering and investigative reporting by the main/lame/left-stream media for the time being, and until the balance swings fully to the semi-professional (in this definition, paid at least part-time to do the reporting and/or commentary), most will have to rely on others to generate content (for good or bad).

While it is clear that the decline, measured in number employed, began to decline by the late 1980s, the fall has been precipitous with the advent of blogs, aggregators, and online news outlets. While there may be a significant amount of causation, the preferences of political junkies (at the very least) to find their news somewhere other than home-delivered newspapers brings up the question asked above–where will you get your news?

If media bias is a concern (and it clearly is), how much will you be willing, if at all, to pay for alternate news sources?

And are micro-niche news sites–say, one for local business, one for sports (or even just a favorite team), one for local politics, etc.–enough to cover with the same thought/depth/critical resources as the ground covered by the ink-stained relics of the Age of Paper?

Right now the watchers watch the legacy providers. But who will watch the watchers in the Age of Pixels?

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