Newspapers provide more than just jobs, ya know!

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Not dying so much as really sick

Someone commented on a previous post about Prepress job trends saying they thought physical printing is breathing its last. At first, I was going to say I agree. Then I actually thought about it, and I can say that I strongly disagree.

No question, there is a LOT of hand wringing right now in the print industry and a lot of barriers to growth for it: the explosion of digital media is, in my opinion, the biggest challenge we face. Traditional methods for delivering information (newspaper, magazine, etc), and the advertising business model that have supported them, are losing eyeballs to digital media for sure. There’s enough research about it, I don’t need to add data in this post. I don’t think people are all that willing to PAY for access to info, but advertisers may support it. This situation can and will change soon, I’m sure.

The disintegration of newspapers is especially troubling. In American society, we’ve always relied on professional journalism to dig up issues that our government may not want us to know about, and in that way newspapers have had a tremendous positive effect on the way our democracy works. News is important, and the way news has been presented has only recently changed a little. Physical printing has a place, but there is no question that its value to people is changing at a really rapid pace. To me, it’s sad. More a symptom of an unhealthy culture than a full-blown disease.

What about Twitter?

Twitter and its ilk may provide a more immediate gratification about news, or eyewitness reports. And, the emerging Social Media are certainly fun. But they don’t provide much background and you’re forced to sift through the noise. Maybe there will be some kind of aggregator in the future that do the sifting for me, check the twitterer’s credentials, and send me relevant little quips.

The newspaper used to be the king of all media. Its importance can’t be underrated. On the other hand, what qualifies me to write this blog?

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