I totally agree with you that the decline of newspapers is mostly a result of changes in advertising and demographics. I know at the paper I work for Classifieds has taken a beating.

The problem, I think, is newspapers didn’t adjust to the changes in demographics but sort of kept operatings like it’s still the 1970s. Newspapers are trying to adjust now, but they have a lot catching up to do.

Gina

My take is that the content of the news had only a marginal effect of the fortunes of physical newspapers. Circulation has been in secular decline since the 70’s, when the two earner family disrupted the time to scan the paper at the end of the day.

The physical paper in the 70’s was the default method to read about sports, get classifieds, the latest celebrity and political gossip. There were always lots of pieces of information in an easily scanable form. It was very easy to Search a print pub.

My take is that moving forward excellence of news is going to take its place as real value. My favorite example so far is Politico.com and the Huffington Post. It’s important to note that these sites are manned by experienced real journalists. This is not crowd sourcing.

The recent deal between Politico and Reuters makes the next stage a little more clear. Reuters has been trying to break into the US for years. They have the resources and experience to scale. If I were the AP, I would be pretty worried.

Meanwhile, the question that I’m focused on is where niche based Print publications are going to live in the coming mix.

You raise a good point that most newspapers cover national and international news by reprinting wire stories … But do you really think the lack of original international and national news in newspapers is leading to their decline? I’m not sure I believe that American readers are abandoning newspapers because they want more indepth stories on Darfur or Pakistan.

I guess we do disagree. I do think there’s still a lot of excellent reporting done by newspapers that is read on the Web, both by major publications like The New York Times and smaller city newspapers. They are just putting their print stories online.

I have been impressed with the breaking news and analysis ability of blogs like the Daily Kos and Huffington Post, but I really haven’t seen investigative or community-service type journalism of a very high quality done independently on blogs. (If I’m missing some great ones, please let me know.)

What I’ve seen on the Web is a lot is blogs linking to thoroughly reported stories done by mainstream news organizations (print and broadcast). Bloggers will make the topic their own with analysis and commentary, but they aren’t doing the actual reporting. Even Google and Yahoo news rely on mainstream sources for their reports, not bloggers.

I am with you on the love of print, though. I still love to hold a newspaper in my hands, but I’m enough of a realist to know that may not always be available.

– Gina

Maybe. But consider that it’s not a delivery problem that most newspapers do national and international news by reprinting or re-reporting wire stories or focus on the blabla du jour.

No doubt there is some great reporting happening, but once it is compared to some other reporting available on the web, the pieces that are excellent in print tend to be few and far between, IMHO.

Meanwhile, while the Screen is great for scanning, I still believe that Print is the original IT for reading. It is interactive with the brain, not just the eyes or hands.

Love how you called newspapers the “original social network.” So glad you feel that way.

Gina