Americans live today in a world of constant connectivity, where they are just as likely to get their news online as from a print newspaper. People say newspapers are "dying," but I believe those deaths have been greatly exaggerated. Print will survive. They may not be produced in the traditional form we are seeing today, but I believe there will always be a need for print.
According to the Historic Pages Web site, newspapers are one of the oldest forms of media technology. Newspapers actually date back some 500 years,when in Renaissance Europe, they were handwritten newsletters circulated privately among merchants. The first true English speaking paper was the London Gazette in 1666, and in the young Americas, the first newspaper appeared in Boston in 1690. It did not last, however, and it was 1704 before the colonies would see a successful paper.
General, or daily newspapers, usually publish stories on local and national happenings, political events and personalities, crime, business, entertainment, society, and sports. They also traditionally include an opinion or editorial page. In addition, there are numerous specialty newspapers that are printed. They run the gamut from labor groups and professionals to cultures and entertainment.
Along the way, newspapers also spawned the birth of magazines. These specialized interest publications are geared at specific audiences. AARP is targeted to a 50-plus audience while Sports Illustrated draws a much larger audience because of the wide ranging ages of sports fans.
For generaions, the prinmary target audience of a daily newspaper ws the American family: Mom, pop and usually the older children. Today, it seems that audience consists primarily of the Baby Boomers and older. For a while, it was looking like doomsday was approaching for newspapers. However, print saw some good news last year. According to the Newspaper Association of America Web site, the latest biennial media attitudes survey from The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reports that newspapers are a major local news sourse, even for 18-to-29 year olds. All groups mentione newspapers as a source of local news more frequently than the Internet, with 41 percent citing newspapers; only 17 percent cited the Wide World Web, bucking the belief that young people ignore papers in general. The survey, released Sept. 13, 2009, reported that even those younger than 30 said they get most of their local news from papers (39 percent) than from online (21 percent). Seventy-four percent also said it would be a major loss if their local newspaper, or a large national newspaper (68 percent), were to stop publishing.
Communication experts even agree there will always be a need for print. It just means that news organizations, in order to survive, will have to understand society's changing behaviors and be willing to adapt and distribute information in a variety of formats. That's good news for the fans of the old-fashioned old ink-on-paper product.
References
Newspaper Association of America. (2009). Pew study: Young readers use local newspapers. Retrieved fro http://www.naa.org.
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