Annotated Bibliography for Sources on “The Death of Newspapers”
“Out of Print”- The Death and Life of the American Newspaper- by Eric Alterman
This long article discusses the issue of the death of the printed press in the coming years. Firstly introduced to the history of newspapers, it states the question who will read the last printed newspaper. The source is very valuable since it takes it as a given that newspapers will die out. In order to survive, newspapers will have to adapt by decreasing employees, going local, targeting the audience more with ‘different’ news, and going online. The internet is, according to this site, the way for newspapers to survive. The readers are changing their lifestyle, little time and interest in celebrities and sports as opposed to world news or finance. The news have to change to directly speak to the reader, through blogs and internet sites. A great example discussed is the Huffington Post, which lives online and is becoming more and more popular among readers (although their standard isn’t set very high). The article also gives a few quotes from famous individuals such as Murdoch on the future of newspapers.
“Clay Shirky is Right: Newspapers Death is Journalisms Loss”-Tom Watson
This article is very useful,written by a media critique who directly targets the facts of dying newspaper markets. He gives concrete lists of newspapers that are going bankrupt or that stopped publishing in the past year- a direct example of how newspapers are losing their readers. He also states how the newspaper market is changing now, through going online and changing their medium. However, he also explaines that he will never stop reading newspapers in print, since articles online are often just revisions of published articles, and not the actual articles themselves. Also, Watson discusses that news are still news, whether online or printed, however the internet kills the printed press slowly. Displays of facts on more online users of newspapers are good to visualize how newspapers are losing their readers for printed press, but Watson comes to the conclusion that nothing can ever replace the printed news.
Newspapers Death Watch.com
Newspapers death Watch is a site showing the figures of the dying newspaper market. The figures are helpful in comparison to other documents read, but the facts are determined on a reader voting, and not from any given ‘credited, valuable’ source. It is merely a tally, to see how the public sees newspapers I the year 2010, and wether newspapers have a future. The overall result from the data is clear; newspapers will die.
“Murdochs Game”- John Cassidy
This article is very long and focuses on Rupert Murdoch, press giant and owner of the Post, 20th Century Fox and other huge corporations. The article emphasizes how Murdoch, despite the increased talk on “death of newspapers”, still keeps buying news companies of newspapers. Also, his involvement in the media is huge, since articles published by his newspapers represent his opinions in most cases, and his political position. He only supports those headliners which content he seems to view as successful for the reading audience, and is so involved in politics and on good terms with leading politicians, that he possesses a lot of power. The articles Murdoch’s newspapers publish even influence elections in the world, such as the election of Prime Minister Blair in England. Murdoch is very conservative, and aims his news at the conservative society. By directly speaking to the audience with published article topics, his newspapers seem to (for the most part) manage to survive the “death of newspaper” era.
“Erich Schmidt tells Newspapers: Create Products People Want and Advertising is the Future”-The Huffington Post
As already read in the title, the article speaks to the future of newspapers, and ways in which they can survive on the market. According to Google CEO Schmidt’s speech, advertisements are the future, and online blogs and websites are not the answer to newspapers survival. This directly opposes other sources, which see the internet as the future. According to Schmidt, websites are too slow to read, and therefore will not be successful. The secret is to figure out what the reader/consumer wants, and give it to them.
“Are newspapers burnt out?”- The Observer
This is a very valuable source, since it seems to contradict the main idea that newspapers are dying. According to Peter Preston however, newspapers will remain a vital part of the future. Although more readers go on the internet as opposed to buying newspapers, the printed press will not go out of business. The article offers facts on the declining sales of newspapers, also in Europe, in the past years. The sources solution to the reduction in readers: going tabloid. Tabloid news (or Tabloidisation) corresponds to the modern human, with little time and need for brief, summarized articles. Also, the article stresses that the new market in India and China have a booming newspaper market, since not everyone in developing nations owns a computer. Examples of successes with tabloid papers can be seen in Britain among others, and the newspapers will have to adapt to the reader to ensure its survival. “Zero-value” news are news with less content and easier understanding to match a broader amount of readers, and this is also, besides tabloids and ads, an element to ensure survival of newspapers. Very helpful and useful are the media- experts opinions in the end of the article, giving different outlooks on the future of newspapers.
“K. Rupert Murdoch”-newscorp.com
This article is a summery of Rupert Murdoch, his profession, his background, his successes and his failures. The article is helpful to get to know Murdoch better, and to understand his actions explained in other articles. The article shows how powerful he really is, owning Newscorp and Paramount, the New York Post, the Times, the Sun, and numerous other newspapers and corporations. He is a billionaire, who owns both up-market newspapers and also tabloid lower-market news such as the Sun.
“Paper Tigers”- Nicholas Lemann
The article is very useful for information on the history of the power struggle between newspapers. Starting with the biggest newspapers in the past, Joseph Pulitzers New York World, and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, the two biggest newspapers nowadays are the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Pulitzer and Hearst both built their newspaper empires from little newspaper businesses, through the use of colorful articles and single-copy sales with large pictures and articles that directly aim to attract the reader. Advertisements in the forms of posters brought popularity, and their newspapers became the leading papers in the USA. These strategies of becoming media moguls are compared to Rupert Murdoch, who in a similar fashion become very powerful and successful. Using the same techniques as Pulitzer and Hearst, he brought up many newspapers like the Journal, and constantly buys new newspapers in times of declining sales. The article analysis the main skills successful media moguls need: the ability to package news of the world and display them in an attractive fashion to the readers.
“State of News Media Survey: Things are Bleak in Journalism”- David Bauder
This article from the Huffington Post shows that according to the annual study of the Journalism industry, not all hope is lost in the Newspaper sales. Despite the fact that four newspapers filed for bankruptcy last year, the Times and Washington Post are getting more readers than ever before (including online reader). There is apparently no indication that people are losing interest in the news. Tom Rosenstiel summarizes it well when stating that it’s not the industry that is dying, that the industry is just disorientated. Therefore, the newspapers online have to find a way to catch themselves in the market again, and not get caught in remembrances of newspaper sales from the past. The article gives a very optimistic outlook on the future, not at all opting that newspapers are dying- they merely need to restructure themselves.
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