Is the Demise of Newspapers Good for All Americans?

In response to, “Are Newspapers Dying?”.

Yes, it is true the newspapers are failing quickly. The country’s great regional dailies, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, are in bankruptcy. Is this good for ALL citizens of the United States?

I agree that with Jeffery Brennan that online news makes sense with the growing age of technology and many literate internet users. However, should we just forget about the older generations who aren’t as technology efficient?

Online news is good because it reaches consumers fast and is free.  However, not every American has internet

connection.  Yes, I suppose they could go to a library to access the internet, but what if they really don’t know

how to use the World Wide Web. Only 27.7% of those 65 and above are online today, eMarketer says.

If they do not know how to use the internet and there are no newspapers, how are they supposed to be informed citizens and get news? I suppose they could get their news from TV or the radio, but those news sources don’t contain as much hard news anymore. These news sources concentrate mainly on celebrity and weather-based “news”.

I also agree that although online news is convent, free, and we can interact with each other, there are many distractions when trying to get news from the internet. Readers can get distracted from actually reading the news by advertisements and other “infotainment” distractions. In newspapers there are not these distractions because the ads are in newspapers cannot pop out at you or play loud noises to get your attention.

I believe that because of all the distractions and room for advertisers to target consumers, some new values are lost on online news. Headlines can change by the hour online; versus a newspaper’s headlines remain the same for an entire day. Like Jeffrey Brennan said, “Currency is important, but is it taking precedence over things like impact? It can be difficult to grasp the most valuable news when it’s changing as fast as the internet moves”.

So in the end, I agree that online news is a good thing- but not for ALL Americans. Young, technology literate citizens like reading news online, but we still need newspapers for older generations. Newspapers also enforce the core news values where the internet may lack.