Newspapers In Transition

Contents: (1) Introduction; (2) Industry History; (3) Industry Conditions: Industry Cost Cutting: Key to Survival?; Declining Advertising Revenues, Recession, and the Internet; Other Factors; Alternative News Sources; (4) Rise of the Web; (5) Interdependence: Searching for New Business Models; Non-profits; (6) Public Policy Issues; (7) Congressional Action: Industry Proposals; Supporting the General Practice of Journalism. Charts and tables.

The impact of cyberspace on newsprint journalism is at the core of this text. After a brief history of U.S. news dailies and weeklies it turns attention to those journals' status today. A wide range of forces that impinge on their success and failure are explored, including the decline of their relevancy for an increasing percentage of the population. Newspapers' prospects for the future is the primary focus as papers curtail their dependency on historically physically-delivered patterns to shift to more economical and faster methods of supplying the news. Rivals for the attention of traditional readers are burgeoning. Possibilities for the outcome over the next decade are investigated. The profound effects of change on newsrooms, advertising, circulation, economics, and the place of newspapers and their communities are fully examined.

The U.S. newspaper industry is suffering through what could be its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Advertising revenues are plummeting due to the severe economic downturn, while readership habits are changing as consumers turn to the Internet for free news and information. Some major newspapers chains are burdened by heavy debt loads. In the past year, seven major newspaper chains have declared bankruptcy, several big city papers have shut down, and many have laid off reporters and editors, imposed pay reductions, cut the size of the physical newspaper, or turned to Web-only publication. As the problems intensify, there are growing concerns that the rapid decline of the newspaper industry will impact civic and social life. This book examines the transitional shift of the newspaper industry and journalism, in general, and the impacts this change will have on American democracy.

Journalism, what happened? In the last decade, the industry and the profession have been rocked to the core. Newspapers as consumer product are as ripe for comic mocking and satire as are the techniques of the journalism profession. The contemporary death and life of journalism is the story of an historic cultural transition. We have lived through the end of the mass-media era and the beginning of the networked-media era. We took in news one way for a century and we simply don't do it like that anymore. Networked: A Contemporary History of News in Transition examines this moment in journalism, the conditions that brought it about and the characteristics that have shaped it and will shape its future. In crafting this sophisticated yet accessible study, new-media scholar Adrienne Russell draws on personal interviews with journalists and analysts at the center of the shift, examines innovative and revealing digital news projects, and underlines larger cultural changes that reflect the new news reality. Networked also examines emergent journalism practices that suggest the forces at work and the stakes involved in developments we have all experienced but, caught up in the rush of change, have had limited perspective to interpret.

This book tells the story of modern-day newspapers by exploring the digital transition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune as a microcosm of the industry. The book shows what news organizations, journalists, news consumers, and professionals can learn about the future of the global newspaper industry.