NDM: The decline in newspapers - MM case studies

On your blog, create a blogpost called 'The future of newspapers' and write a paragraph summarising the argument the article makes. Then answer the following questions:

From the following article I was able to understand how majorly affected the newspaper is actually becoming meaning that they are going to have to either completely reinforce the paper in a new way which is one of the few ways that the newspaper institution will have to incorporate within the industry to ensure that it does not die out. On the other hand In his book “The Vanishing Newspaper”, Philip Meyer calculates that the first quarter of 2043 will be the moment when newsprint dies in America as the last exhausted reader tosses aside the last crumpled edition.  Which only suggest that the newspaper is going to become obsolete for the rich world newspapers which will soon become an endangered element to the corporate world.

1) Do you agree with its view that it is ‘a cause for concern, but not for panic’? in my opinion I do feel that the newspaper is coming to the point being a cause of concern and that only means that eventually it could possibly be a moral panic however, because of the fact that NDM is becoming an established entity for every type of audience who buy the newspapers; because of NDM it means that younger audience are able to find what they are looking for much more quicker and that because its all available online. Therefore as generation tend to grow they’re going to be more likely to follow in the footstep of their past meaning that eventually everything will be found online.

2) The article is 10 years old - an eternity in digital media terms. Have the writer's predictions come to pass? Use statistics from your Ofcom research to support or challenge the writer's argument. Overall its evidently coming true because the fact of the matter both BBC and Guardian are both now widely available on the internet on the other hand Google have also taken over the news industry because it is now widely available on both the internet and also on the smart phone. This means more and more people are using the internet/ data on a constant basis to find out what’s going on in the news therefore they are more likely to be using phones and new digital media to do their research instead of using traditional media as the increase in availability over the worldwide keep going up.

From Ofcom, you can see 63% for 16-34s vs. 18% for 65+ are using internet as a source of news. However, when he/she has talked about all newspaper dying in 2043 is too late and I personal feel that it is earlier.

3) The Economist suggests that high-quality journalism in the future will be backed by non-profit organisations rather than profit-seeking media corporations. Is there any evidence for this? How is the Guardian funded? What do major stories from the last year such as the Panama Papers suggest about how investigative journalism is conducted in the digital age? In the long term I find that the paid investors such as Morgan Stanley as mentioned within the article state that they Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, attacked the New York Times Company, the most august journalistic institution of all, because its share price had fallen by nearly half in four years. Therefore they have now came to the conclusion of using ads which actually allow them to generate a capital to fund the newspapers. On the other hand Association of America, the number of people employed in the industry fell by 18% between 1990 and 2004. Tumbling shares of listed newspaper firms have prompted fury from investors. This shows that the employed workers have to leave because the newspaper firms are having a hard time to get news meaning that the digital era has taken over these employees work because of citizen journalisms as they are sending in their own UGC to the news which make workers seem obsolete.



Homework/classwork
You have some serious homework this week - in addition to finding your weekly NDM stories. Your main work is some in-depth reading which will provide excellent preparation for university. David Simon, creator of critically acclaimed TV series The Wire and a former journalist, has written a passionate defence of the newspaper industry in the face of the new and digital media onslaught. This will easily take you a couple of hours to complete - make sure you put the time in.

The article, Build the Wall, is available here on the Columbia Journalism Review website.

Your tasks are as follows:

Read the article in full and create a blogpost on your MEST3 Exam Blog called 'Build The Wall analysis'. 

1) Summarise each section in one sentence:

·                     Section 1 (To all of the bystanders reading this…)

·                     Section 2 (Truth is, a halting movement toward...)

·                     Section 3 (Beyond Mr. Sulzberger and Ms. Weymouth…)

·                     Section 4 (For the industry, it is later than it should be…)

2) Summarise David Simon’s overall argument in 250 words.

3) The New York Times added a paywall in 2011 - two years after David Simon's essay. Read this summary of the New York Times's paywall - why does the writer suggest the NYT's paywall was successful?

4) The Washington Post followed with its own paywall in 2013. Read this article about the launch of the Post's paywall. List one strength and oneweaknesses of newspaper paywalls that the article discusses.  

5) Read this Guardian comment by AC Grayling piece on the state of journalism that was published the year before David Simon's essay. What references to new and digital media can you find in AC Grayling's argument? Overall, do you feel the comment piece is positive or negative about the influence of new/digital media on the newspaper industry?

6) Finally, what is your own opinion? Do you agree that newspapers need to put online content behind a paywall in order for the journalism industry to survive? Would you be willing to pay for news online? Critical autonomy is the key skill in A2 Media - you need to be able form opinions on these issues.