With IT's advancements the newspaper industry has suffered. Can anyone remember the last time they went out and bought a newspaper? These advancements have changed us to get our information from the internet instead of reading the newspaper everyday to be up to date with what is going on in the world. Instead of wating until Sunday morning to look through the coupon book to see what all of the best deals are now we just go to the store's website and fould out how much it is. Now all of this isn't necessarily bad it is just different and has caused many job losses.
In between the years of 2008 and 2009 there were a total of 166 newspapers closings in the United States. With all of these closings their have been many job losses. In those two years their was a total of 35,000 job losses.
If the newspapers weren't closing down then they were making cuts. These employee cuts have consisted of paper couriers, manufacturers, members of the editorial staff, and journalists. Paper couriers are given larger paper routes, have harsher penalties, and loss of vacation time. In addition to the employee cuts the newspapers themselves are also taking a hit. Because with the loss of editorial staff members and journalists the papers themselves are not up to the same quality that they once were. The manufacturing cuts have led to smaller papers being produced. IT's advancement is killing the newspaper industry, and soon receiving a newspaper at your front door will be a thing in the past.
References:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/jul/06/us-press-publishing-downturn
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Matthew Gilliam
It sucks but it is the world now. The only way people will recover the job loss is to innovate with the flow at this point. The outcome of news papers being a thing in the past is kind of good that we don't use much paper anymore. However, I do feel for those that lose their jobs because of this. Another thing I kind of want to put in my statement, our generation is getting lazy. My parents are old school, and if anything that I got from then, I would still be that one guy that would read from a newspaper instead of using the internet to look up the news. Another reason why is I kind of think its cool to just hold that bad boy up and look like a bad ass.
ReplyDeleteI am one of the few people out there that still receive an actual newspaper. I did reduce it down to 3 days a week due to my demanding schedule. I began to notice that they were piling up by my chair and not being read. I prefer to have an actual newspaper in my hand because it is not only what I am use to it is easier to see that staring at a computer screen.
ReplyDeleteI was flying back from Chicago a few months ago and was sitting in the middle seat. (Ugh!) The woman to the right was reading from a Kindle while the man to my left was reading from an I-Pad. I was sitting in the middle reading the hard copy of the newspaper I got from the hotel. I thought to myself, now this is old school.
My parents are two of the people still left in today's society that will stop at the gas station every Sunday on their way home from church to get their Sunday newspaper. After lunch they will sit in the den and trade sections back and forth after they've had a chance to read them. They both catch up on the headline news stories and then my mom will clip her coupons and my dad will read the comics. I think this is a wonderful thing that they enjoy very much but it is definitely becoming out-dated. I believe they do this because it's what they've always done and it seems simpler and more enjoyable to them. However, I can't imagine if I wanted to find out more about a hot topic or a story in the news and that being my only source to use. If I want to know about something I will type it in Google and then browse thru many different online news articles to get all the information that I can get. My sources are unlimited. Not only is this a more thorough way of researching something, to me, but I also feel like this would be a faster way to find out exactly what you want. This is because you can type in specifically what you are looking for in the search engine and many options will pop up. I think the newspaper is a wonderful thing but I think it's going to become extinct when the older generation dies out. I love looking thru a newspaper if I have it infront of me, but with technology today and the internet, I think the physical newspaper will die out.
ReplyDeleteMy father was VP for a large newspaper organization growing up, and still does consulting work for print media. So, my entire life has been spent monitoring the newspaper industry. This post hit the nail on the head. The revenue newspaper companies gain from selling papers, or yearly subscriptions, is very minimal. If I'm not mistaking I believe this accounts for less than 10% of revenue. Advertising is the newspaper giant and this is where much concern has come into play, especially regarding online advertising. In the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's, if you wanted an ad to be seen you placed it in the newspaper. Today, companies can spend much less and be more effective by placing an ad online.
ReplyDeleteThe change from print media to online media seems like it happened overnight...in late 2006/early 2007 my father spent time in the Bay Area, CA, opening one of the largest newspaper shifts that I can recall. Thousands of jobs were created and the Bay Area was at an all-time high. The market was prime for this type of transition and was a boom time for this particular newspaper company. Unfortunately, in 2008 the bottom fell out of the Bay Area market and the company was left with this massive project. Budget cuts, layoffs, and reduced print makes for an ugly scene. At this point I believe the industry really transitioned into survival mode. As stated in the blog post, regional managers were now covering areas 5X the area before. One example would be instead of covering from Monterey, CA to Sacramento, CA, they would add an additional section and stretch the covered area to the Northern California state line. Fortunately, I feel the industry has settled in a bit and is finding their way slowly. Who knows what the long-term future is though?
I really enjoyed this post and related well to the material!