The New York Times announced Wednesday a plan to make staff cuts that will leave 7.5 percent of its newsroom staff jobless.
It’s no secret newspaper offices are taking big hits. A poll conducted by Pew Research Center in 2010 found that 64 percent of Americans believe print editions of newspapers will be extinct by the year 2050.
To say that print newspapers are going extinct, however, is not to say that the newspaper industry is going extinct. Newspapers will adapt as they always have.
With the arrival of radio, newspapers were thought to die out. They didn’t. With the arrival of television, newspapers and radio were predicted to become obsolete. They haven’t. These media never fall off the map completely, but are modified to meet the demands of changing times.
In today’s world, newspapers are moving online and becoming mobile-friendly as more and more readers reach for their smart phones to track current events and ignore the print editions lingering on newsstands.
While online revenues for most news media only account for a fraction of the income from print, as we move toward a paperless world, the prospect for print news dims. Trends show that there will come a time when the cost to print newspapers will be higher than the revenue they bring in. At that point, printing will stop, and we’ll be that much closer to a completely paperless world.
The move from print to online news will keep the newspaper industry afloat, but the days of seeing print newspapers in almost every hand are long gone, and that image will continue to fade.
Although print newspapers may disappear by 2050, that doesn’t mean they won’t be missed. Consuming news through the print medium is a distinctly satisfying experience, offering benefits that other media cannot.
Television news has the tendency to be distracting, with fast-moving graphics, mindless chitchat between anchors and commercial breaks. The connection between the consumer and the news is one more step removed. I blame my own short attention span for being distracted by anchors’ voices, hairstyles and outfits, but I still consume less news than I do when reading a newspaper.
Simplicity is one of the most appealing characteristics of a newspaper. Never, when reading a newspaper, must you wait for a commercial to end to continue engaging. Never must you endure an anchor’s unfortunate personality to get to the information you seek.
This can be said about online newspapers, too, that provide few distractions and bear likeness to the print newspaper. The print newspaper is not without faults-it’s much bulkier than a slender smart phone, and if you don’t have a subscription, dropping $2.50 on one weekday New York Times is cringe worthy, especially if you’re not looking to read the whole thing. Print newspapers present a kind of reliability that’s hard to come by now.
Barring a freak windstorm, a tangible print newspaper isn’t going anywhere. Exclusively reading news on mobile and electronic devices leaves the consumer vulnerable to potential technological pitfalls. Wi-Fi is not always accessible or free, battery lives can die and electrical outlets, while plentiful, don’t exist everywhere.
Not being able to access online news is rare, which is why it’s not improbable to say that the 64 percent of Americans who predict the downfall of newspapers by 2050 may be correct. Reading news on laptops and mobile devices is convenient and fits comfortably into the lifestyles of many Americans.
Still, the trustworthiness of a paper should not go unacknowledged. Papers don’t require cords, plugs or batteries to provide hours of information and entertainment.
The experience of reading a print newspaper is efficient, enjoyable and free of frills but, if the aforementioned prediction is correct, loyal newspaper readers have less than 40 years to cherish the dependability of the aging medium and brace themselves for a day when it no longer exists.