Monday, April 13, 2009

Death of a Newspaper

The article we read for this blog was about a paper in Denver, Colorado closing its doors after 150 years of circulation. It spoke about the sadness of The Rocky News having to go to only the Internet, but it also spoke about the death of journalism as a whole and how the newspaper industry is in deep trouble.
It applies to our class in one major way. If any of the students in the class, like myself, have plans to go into a career of journalism, it really makes the future seem grim. It might make a few either change their choice or look into a backup plan. As for journalism as a whole, it just makes journalists and the readers wonder what is going to happen next. If this economic struggle pursues, will more papers close? Will more jobs be lost? Will every paper soon be only available on the internet? This article had a deep tone of sadness as well as dread for the journalism industry at a whole. This writer seems to believe that The Rocky News isn't special because soon many other papers will meet the same fate.
The questions I have are how are journalists who are already in the field taking this? What happens if they lose their job? Is it easy for them to just pick up another or do they have to drop their entire career? And what is this going to do to journalism study in college? Is it going to focus on non-print? Are they going to be frank and say that it is an industry that is in trouble or are they going to try combat it and fight to bring print back?