Mar
24
Online is the new going away
March 24, 2009 |
About a half dozen people have said the same thing to me since The Ann Arbor News announced that it will close this July: “Journalism isn’t going away. It’s just moving online.”
I wish that were true, but the daily newspaper that I am currently reading on paper has laid off what remains of its staff, and I expect that only a handful will work for the online news site that is taking its place. Probably for less money.
When I see the same thing happening in city after city, it makes me think that journalism is going away for a while, because whatever is supposed to replace pulp-and-ink newspapers isn’t going up as fast as the dailies are going down.
Every week, the news about newspapers gets worse. The Associated Press ran a story about the Rocky Mountain News closing. Hearst announced that it may sell or shut down the San Francisco Chronicle. And Detroit is already looking at the demise of a daily paper, since the Free Press announced that it will begin this month to publish three days a week, instead of seven–the death knell of a daily newspaper, if I’ve ever heard one. And the Journal Register company is closing dozens of weekly papers in the Northeast and Midwest.
What scares me is that most people aren’t deeply concerned about the loss of their newspapers.
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