Here’s one perspective. It’s an excerpt from an article from The Economist, entitled: “Who Killed the Newspaper?”:
Having ignored reality for years, newspapers are at last doing something. In order to cut costs, they are already spending less on journalism. Many are also trying to attract younger readers by shifting the mix of their stories towards entertainment, lifestyle and subjects that may seem more relevant to people’s daily lives than international affairs and politics are. They are trying to create new businesses on- and offline. And they are investing in free daily papers, which do not use up any of their meagre editorial resources on uncovering political corruption or corporate fraud. So far, this fit of activity looks unlikely to save many of them. Even if it does, it bodes ill for the public role of the Fourth Estate.
Television is facing the same problem. "News" programming has already begun to take a back seat to "reality" television and game shows. NBC, for example, has decided that game shows are *much* cheaper to produce than are "news" programs, so it's out with the news and in with the…old.
I'm a slow reader. I'm sure that I am the minority and many other folks can read their newspapers very quickly (my wife can get through the Sunday Paper in about 45 min to an hour), but I prefer to get my news from either TV or the Internet. I'm pretty happy to see that newspapers are floundering, maybe that will urge them to dump their publications and go for online publications exclusively or a mixture of online and local broadcasting.
I think at least for local papers who cover a certain region it might be better for them to focus on getting air time on local public access TV channels. I know that our channel 8 has plenty of timeslots open. If the local paper were to put on a show for just the coverage area (basically the county) they would probably have much more success with reaching the people. Now, if it's just like any other business and they're only interested in making money… well, there's just not as much demand these days and they'll just have to go under anyway.
I'm sure that the Chicago Tribunes and New York Times of the country will be able to survive and possibly expand once the smaller, community based papers are gasping for their last breaths. But, maybe that's just the way evolution is going now and natural selection is cutting off the weak.
I know that I get more local news off the internet than I do off my local paper (which I only get on SUnday anyway in order to get coupons, funnies, and the local TV Guide for the week).