Aikens "The Internet is Killing Print Media"

For the past decade, print journalism has been on the decline. Online news got popular, and in the recent years, people have become dependent on it for quick answers from Google searches. No longer are people willing to devote any amount of their precious time to sit down with a physical copy of the newspaper. People want their information, and they want it now. This new mindset has created two unique dilemmas for the print journalism industry. The first problem is advertisers go where the people are; since people look to the Web first, advertisers have neglected their print ads and made the shift to online. The second problem comes from the sense of immediacy that comes in online journalism. Online newspapers will report a story even if they are unsure of the facts because it is more important to get the story to the public than to get the story right. The lack of willing advertisers and online journalism stand as the two biggest threats to the print journalism industry in the coming years. Due to the shift to online and the lack of advertisers, seasoned journalists are losing their jobs, and new journalists are not getting hired to print publications.

The field is changing because of advertising. People are going online to get their news for free, so advertisers are not placing ads in print media. Ads have always been the moneymaker for newspapers and magazines. According to The State of the News Media report for 2008 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, in 2007, ad revenues for newspapers dropped 7 percent. Although 7 percent does not seem like a large fall at first, when you take into account the total advertising revenue of around $45 billion, 7 percent is more than $3 billion. The State of the News Media for 2010 states that advertising revenues for newspapers have fallen 43 percent in the past three years.

According to an article called “Twelve Major Media Brands Likely to Close in 2009,” Playboy lost advertising pages each year from 2004 to 2008. The problem for Playboy is people are not willing to pay for pinup girls when they can get free porn online. Playboy would lose even more advertising if it got anymore provocative than it already is. Playboy might have to switch to a solely online publishing to compete with the adult material that is already online (McIntyre).

Paul Gillin has a blog where he talks about the death of the newspaper. On his blog there is a section where he lists the U.S. metropolitan daily newspapers that have closed since March 2007. There are 11 deceased newspapers on that list, and the list does not include small newspapers, just daily newspapers in big cities (Gillin).

The State of the News Media report states, “With the print-only business model broken, newspapers have no choice but to develop the multimedia content of their web sites, harvest online advertising wherever they can find it and invent profitable side businesses.”

There is no going against online journalism for the simple fact that it is what people have chosen as their number one option when finding news. One thing print newspapers can do is use online media to supplement their print media. For example, if a story is too large to run in its entirety in the newspaper, there can be a line at the end of the story that tells the reader to go online to continue reading. Similarly, if there is a print story, but that story has some multimedia feature, such as a slideshow or a video, the reader can be directed online for that element.

If enough people are going to a paper’s website, advertisers will want to pay to be on those pages. With enough money, revenue from a website could help keep the print newspaper running. Larger, more prominent papers are able to charge for their online subscriptions. The New York Times will begin charging for their online subscriptions in early 2011. The article on NYTimes.com says:

For years, publishers banked on a digital future supported entirely by
advertising, dismissing online fees as little more than a formula for shrinking
their audiences and ad revenue. But two years of plummeting advertising has many
of them weighing anew whether they might collect more money from readers than
they would lose from advertisers (Perez-Peña).

For a long time, online media sites were scared if they charged for content, people would not come to their site. If this works for the New York Times, it will work because people are willing to pay for the quality of content that NYTimes.com produces. One flaw in this system, though, is people who are already subscribed to the print newspaper will automatically have an online subscription included. Since the people who already read the New York Times will have a free online subscription, the site may not get that many more unique users.

Though the switch to online journalism is inevitable, it poses two distinct problems: Journalists are not currently trained to produce for the Web, and online media are more concerned with getting stories first than getting stories right. Due to the fact that online journalism is a new endeavor, journalism schools have not made the changes in their curriculum for multimedia to supplement their print courses.

Currently, there is one required “multimedia” course in the News Journalism curriculum at Kent State University; the class is Video Basics. In the class, students are taught the most elementary tools in video capturing and editing, and though it is a valuable skill, this class does little to prepare the students from the real world. They do not learn about packaging stories or about how to best tell a story through multimedia—skills needed to succeed in online journalism.

Sue Zake, professor of journalism and mass communication and faculty advisor to the Daily Kent Stater, says the School of Journalism is considering a revamp of the curriculum to update it for the current trends in journalism. The faculty is talking about removing an introductory-level media writing course and replacing it with a multimedia course. This would be the first time the Kent State School of Journalism provided this type of course, but Zake says it is necessary due to the shift toward online journalism.

There are already schools and institutions dedicated to providing journalists with the multimedia and social networking skills needed to be successful in the field today. The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, part of the Missouri School of Journalism, is working toward redefining journalism. Its mission statement reads:

The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute is a world-class center for
researching and testing new models of journalism in this era of technological
advances. RJI makes the most of its location in a premier, hands-on journalism
school at a research-extensive university and the collective creativity of
visiting professionals and researchers. It assumes a leading position among
centers devoted to journalism and media studies (rji.missouri.edu).

The institute is working to improve journalism by using social media and other new forms of media that will stand up to the job loss in the industry as it is right now. They are looking to improve the quality of journalism and renew the importance of journalism. With schools like this, journalists new and old will have a platform to learn the technology of the day and the ability to change along with the shift field.

The second problem of the need to get a story first is important because it goes against all the ideals taught to journalists in school. In the name of credibility, the facts are the most important aspect of a story. Since online media outlets are able to change stories immediately, rather than running a correction the next day like a newspaper would have to, they worry less about whether the story is perfect, and they will post stories without facts. If someone wants an answer, online media outlets want to make sure they give an answer, whether or not it’s the correct one.

The solution to the problem also comes in the form of schooling. Multimedia isn’t the only thing that needs implemented into journalism curriculum; students have to know how to handle deadline online stories, just as they have to know how to handle deadline print stories. Online media also needs to be brought up in ethics classes, and questions need to be posed on whether it is ethical to post articles to the newspaper website that the reporter and editors know to be wrong and/or missing information, with the intention of changing it when the new information is found. If there is protocol for print media, there is no reason why it cannot be altered to fit within the online media agenda.

Online media is not always wrong, and their ability to get information out quickly is also harming print media. In an article on Helium.com about why the Internet is killing print journalism, Wayne Ramsey says:

The second biggest issue with print journalism is that the information takes at
least a day for consumers to receive it. With magazines it can take upwards of a
month. The Internet is able to provide this information immediately as it
happens. This means that newspapers are already out of date by the time they
come out. Magazines are extremely out of date by the time they come out.

Of course, timeliness is second only to cost, and, one a person has access to the Internet, the acquisition of content is free.

Online media is not completely terrible. As previously mention, the Internet is a seemingly infinite amount of space for journalistic material. While a physical newspaper can only hold so much information, an online paper has nothing but space. In order to be the most efficient, the paper has to be in demand, but it also has to set people up to visit the website. If the two do not work in tandem, the online media will almost always destroy the print media. If it is controlled and handled properly, the two can work hand-in-hand to provide the most information possible.

Job loss in the current economy is a problem in every field, but journalism is taking hits because of ad revenue and the ongoing switch to online media as well. According to The State of the News Media for 2010 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

Roughly 13,500 jobs for full-time, newsroom professionals disappeared
during that period, the total falling from 55,000 to 41,500, a count which
includes some 284 new jobs at some online-only newspapers now included in the
industry’s tallies. That means that newsrooms have shrunk by 25% in three
years, and just under 27% since the beginning of the decade (journalism.org).

Even though jobs are hard to come by, some journalists are finding ways to continue writing and training themselves in hopes to be hired again. Blogging has recently become popular, and one blog in particular by Joanna Geary, web development editor for The Times in London, focuses on what journalists can do to make themselves better and more desirable to publications. In her “about me” section, Geary says, “I am an advocate of using social media and other online communication tools to better understand, collaborate with and serve those who we reach with our journalism” (joannageary.com). This summarizes the new fundamental idea of journalism, and Geary helps her readers focus on what they can do to make sure they better understand, collaborate, and serve.

Another trend is laid off journalists are going back to school. This ties into the fact that journalism schools need to redevelop their curriculum to incorporate online media because not only do the students enrolled need it to succeed in the future, journalists who never received the training are coming back to school to compete with the students and recent graduates. This also supports the most important solution to job loss: the willingness to learn and adapt. The law of the land has been set in journalism for some time, but it is quickly changing. Those who are unwilling to look toward the future will soon learn that they are being left behind by graduates who are not only great writers, but tech-heads as well. Since the industry is changing so rapidly, they aren’t even looking for jobs that would be considered traditional journalism jobs. They are getting jobs in teaching as well as kind of inventing their own kinds of new journalism.

In Nicole Kallmeyer’s article she talks about how, even after she went to graduate school at one of the most prestigious journalism schools in the United States, she still could not find a job. Kallmeyer says, “In journalism, layoffs and hiring freezes began before the recession hit, and are likely to continue after the economy starts to recover and other sectors increase their payrolls” (Kallmeyer).

In the article “Landing a job in today’s economy,” there are five tips on how a journalist can market him or herself better in order to get a job in a field where so many people are losing jobs at a rapid pace. Two of these tips are “don’t narrowly define yourself” and “fine-tune multimedia skills” (Peck). That’s what students are learning how to do, and that’s what people who are already in the field are doing to keep jobs or get new jobs quickly.

They are going back to school because the jobs are changing so quickly. Kids coming out of schools are going to know the basics on how to do just about anything. So even though the older journalists have more experience, the newer people are taking the jobs because they can do more.

One writer from TechCrunch.com brought up the question that if print media, or “real journalism,” fails, should the United States government step in and help like it has done for things such as highways, national defense, et cetera. As the writer points out, this is not a reasonable solution to the print media’s problems. The First Amendment provides freedom of the press; the notion of a government bailout goes against that. The article states, “Freedom of the press is one of the most important checks on government. If they’re paying the bills, the press is no longer independent” (Arrington). Government intervention would most certainly take that First Amendment freedom away.

Overall, the most important solution to the problems in print media is acknowledging the changes in the field and adapting a skill set in order to succeed. At this point, nothing is going to be able to save print media. People are already too set in their online ways to care about taking the hour to pick up a newspaper and read it cover to cover. There is no longer anything alluring about having a physical newspaper in hand, with newsprint rubbing off on fingertips. If people are unable to get it sent to their BlackBerry/iPhone/iPad/directly transmitted to their brains, they are uninterested. The solution is not to fix print media; the solution is to adapt to the changes in journalism that have come naturally through the development of technology. The only silver lining to the whole situation is the people who are getting laid off from newspaper and magazines are coming back to the colleges and either become the teachers or the colleagues of the students in print media. Since they know best why people are getting laid off, they know best on what to teach the students nearing graduation.

Lack of advertising in newspapers has led journalists into an age of online journalism, and there is no turning back. Newspapers can no longer rely on subscriptions and advertising revenue to stay afloat. Online media is new media, and one every journalist will have to know to be successful. In the next few years, the newspaper field is unpredictable, but the longevity of the newspaper is directly correlated to the evolution of online journalism. Newspapers will only be around as long as they are needed and in demand. If the Internet can provide the same quality of journalism, newspapers will become obsolete.

For journalism to even stand a chance in the “just Google it” era, journalists have to adapt the skill sets to support the information and technology needed to succeed. Journalism schools have to adapt coursework to incorporate multimedia and social media, two very important aspects in online journalism. Newspapers have to find ways to work alongside their online counterparts in order to keep people interested and keep them coming back. Online media does not ruin journalism; it is simply forces print journalists to learn, grow, and adapt to the changing times. People will always need news—that will not change—but where they will find that news is changing every day. Journalism just has to keep up.

Works Cited

Arrington, Michael. "If Real Journalism Fails As A Business, Should Government Step In?"
TechCrunch. 24 Jan. 2008. Web.

Geary, Joanna. Web log post. Web. .

Gillin, Paul. Newspaper Death Watch. Mar. 2007..

Journalism.org. The State of the News Media 2008. .

Journalism.org. The State of the News Media 2010. <>.

Kallmeyer, Nicole. "Do you want a story with that coffee?; Networking key to finding a job
in this economy." Financial Post 27 May 2009, National ed., Careers sec.: 10. Web.

McIntyre, Douglas A. "Twelve Major Media Brands Likely To Close In 2009." 24/7 Wall St.
12 Jan. 2009. Web. .

Peck, Lee Anne. "Landing a job in today's economy." Quill May 2009: 10. Print.

Perez-Pena, Richard. "The Times to Charge for Frequent Access to Its Web Site." 20 Jan. 2010.
Web.

Ramsey, Wayne. "Why the Internet Is Killing Print Journalism.” Web.
.

"RJI Vision and Mission." Reynolds Journalism Institute. Web.
.
Zake, Sue. Personal interview. 7 Dec. 2010.