For Newspapers, It's All Over but the Blogging

We've been hashing over in various classes the question of whether newspapers will continue to exist in another 20-30 years. Some of the folks at the Wharton School of Business say it's all over for the daily print product.

Wharton's Peter S. Fader

holds out little hope that people will continue to buy physical newspapers in large numbers in years to come. He likens the Internet’s assault on newspapers to the impact that digital downloading of music has had on compact discs: CD’s still have appeal but they are no longer the sole, dominant medium they once were. "I still believe that there’s a vital role for non-digital content in music," Fader suggests. "There’s a lot to be said for owning a CD and putting it on the shelf and holding it in your hand. Some people say that same thing about newspapers. I’m not sure I agree with that. It may be true, but newspapers are transient. They have no archive value. I’m not going to add a newspaper to my collection. They are a nuisance to deal with, especially since we don’t wrap fish anymore. When the Chicken Littles say, ‘The sky is falling,’ I think they’re right."

Another Wharton prof, Lawrence Hrebiniak, says the newspaper industry's biggest problem is that it's gotten fat and sassy:

If you look at the history of newspapers, they have been harassed for a long time [by emerging competitors]. Ever since the telegraph, radio and TV, everyone's been predicting the demise of newspapers. What have they done? They have adapted by being proactive. When TV and radio came along, newspapers bought them out. But I think the industry has matured to the point to where it has been a little lazy."

Finally, we get this nail in the coffin from Whartonian Joel Waldfogel:

"It's a generally declining industry. If you look across ages of people, newspapers are much more heavily consumed by older consumers than younger consumers. A few papers have been able to distribute themselves in multiple places, the primary example being The New York Times. The Times has been able to keep circulation figures up through broader distribution, but that's not a strategy that will work for many papers."

As a 10-year newspaper reporter and editor and then 16-year adviser of a student newspaper, I want the newspaper to survive. I still think there's nothing that can replace the experience of actually sitting down, blocking out distractions, and diving in to what's going on in my community and in the world. But even I have to admit that the temptations are great to rely on blogs, Web sites, podcasts and news aggregators. I've been using an RSS news reader on my laptop now for a couple of months, and I have to admit it's a pretty convenient way to keep up on the news.

But I also know that when I rely on those new-fangled ways of getting news, I skim more, read less and generally know even less. At dinner tonight, my 18-year-old knew more about the French youth-labor unrest than I did. And guess why? He still reads the newspaper every morning.