The Death of the Newspaper

Is the death of the newspaper upon us? A brief history of newspapers in the United States alone should tell us the answer to that very question.

The same newspapers that guided our Founding Fathers to politicize and disseminate among the general public the freedoms they were fighting for in the American Revolution are now on the brink of self-destruction. Newspapers have always had general respect and revere in the public spectrum – a reliable source of information, until sensationalism became a primary focus. The birth of Yellow Journalism, the era in which Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal in 1895 competed for sales, where news increasingly became focused around scandal-mongering, sensationalism, jingoism, or some otherwise unprofessional standardized media practices, brought to the nation a mistrust in reliability of the newspaper. Fortunately for them, this faith would be restored with the investigative coverage that would review to the public lies propagandized by the Johnson administration about the Vietnam War, through the New York Time’s historic publishing of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, as well as investigate coverage by Time, The New York Times, and the Washington Post that would bring down the Nixon administration by exposing Watergate. As the public’s distrust of the government went down, their faith in the newspaper and investigative journalism went up. Unfortunately, this would not be enough to save them.

According to The Future Exploration Network’s media research, newspapers are set to be extinct in 2017, literally 6 years from the present. Several factors underlying this future extinction include technology uptake (those using newer forms of technology to access news, such as the Internet, or mobile phones), economic development, the structure of the newspaper industry (which is too in the past and not up to date), demographics (newspaper reading is more of an activity of the older generation), and consumer patterns in their preferences and behaviors. It is indeed a fact that as newspaper usage and readership goes down (whereas weekday sales of newspapers are down 9% from last year), the usage of the Internet for news purposes is indeed going up. Though some would cite the recession and Internet usage for the decline in newspaper purchases, one particular reason could also be the conscious decision by newspaper publishers to focus on more loyal and profitable readers, raising their prices and catering to those readers, while at the same time, alienating potential new readers.

The New York Times is attempting a new strategy this year in an effort to tackle the problem of their endangerment. Starting in 2011, those accessing the New York Times online will be allowed to view a certain number of articles a month for free – after they have crossed a particular threshold of readership online, they must pay a flat fee for unlimited access. This could have either effect. Because the New York Times is a respected name in news, due to its long history as well as its publishing of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, this means of tackling a profit loss in physical newspaper readership through charging for online dissemination of its own articles for a flat rate could boost their profit shares. Unfortunately for them, that is an optimistic view. As the increase in various online media sites increase, due to the conglomeration of news sites by such aggregates as Google News, the potential for somebody to pay for online news usages is potentially very low.  Furthermore, the same increase in online news is paralleled by an increase in the amount of information disseminating from the online blogosphere, increasing to political polarization as blogs are becoming more and more liberal or conservative in opinion.

What does the drop in newspaper viewership mean for the potential of politics in the United States? The answer: polarization. As newspaper viewership drops, so do the traditional ABC-CBS-NBC network evening news broadcasts. CNN, one of the first ever cable news networks is unable to prevent its ratings from consistently dropping, reaching a new low in 2010. CNN, which is supposed to be the most moderate of the three major cable news networks, is now behind the conservative-leaning Fox News and the liberal-leaning MSNBC. If viewers are not flocking to their TV sets, they are primarily flocking to the Internet for news. Because of this conscious decision to go online for political news, users are more likely to garner information from sources they trust – or sources rather than they agree with. Subsequently more conservative-thinking individuals and more liberal-leaning individuals are more likely to go to online blogs or news sites that parallel, and often channel their position on the political spectrum. This breeds deeper polarization in the political arena – leading to the birth of the Tea Party, as well as left-wing sites like Moveon.Org. This isn’t all bad though, for it could provide a potential for third parties such as the Green Party or the Libertarian Party to rise in popularity, as more people become open to the idea of political change, in opposition to the standard two-party system that has dominated politics over the last century and a half.

What does this say for the fate of this very own newspaper, the California Review? Founded in 1982, according to estimations the California Review itself would have died out in 2017, lasting only 35 years. What does it say for fellow newspapers at UCSD, those that are funded by Associated Students, The Left Coast Post, and those that are self-funded, The Guardian, just to name a few? Fortunately for them and all of us, that answer is simple. College newspaper viewership is not likely to expire, because the audience is such a small and often times dedicated base. Because each university or school happens to have their own newspapers, there isn’t likely to be an online source disseminating the same information garnered by that one particular school. Subsequently, they are not in trouble.

Though newspapers have a long been part of our history, the likelihood of their extinction in 2017 or perhaps a little later is very high. Though this could potentially lead to polarization as users flock to their news of choice online, the future is not necessarily a dark one. With the Internet comes new ideas and new sources of information – as opposed to the various newspaper forces in the United States that have dominated news ever since its independence. As long as the freedom our Founding Fathers gave to us is alive in the coming future, the Internet will be the new avenue in mass media by which news will be disseminated to the general public, revolutionizing American thinking for the better for this generation and all future generations to come.