Paper Cuts

BY Edward Wasserman - October 3, 2005 - Miami Herald

A thick cloud has settled over the U.S. newspaper business. Journalism students back from their summer internships no longer speak glowingly about the intoxicating thrill of a city room on deadline. Instead the newsroom veterans told them to go to law school.

This is another article among many that are appearing which recognizes the damage done to the newpaper business by the Internet and the dramatically changing climate for all forms of communication in our modern world.

All of the damage has not been wrought by bloggers, but they have certainly been a significant group to make an impression on newspapers. Bloggers have broken the back of the illusion that the MSM is unbiased. Many technical changes are also impacting the revenue base of newspapers. These are driven by the increasingly sophisticated search engine capabilities of the Internet.

Thus job ads, coupon ads, sale announcements, car ads and sale of small personal items are moving agressively to the Internet. This cuts the conventional ad revenue base for newspapers significantly. If you are a newspaper reader, or employee, get ready for massive changes in the way newspapers look and are distributed in the very near future. Unless something changes, most newspapers will be out of business, or be in a completely different business, very soon.