The Future of Journalism

November 24, 2009 jillstud87

The Internet has become such a constant in our lives that we don’t acknowledge its presence, we just know it’s there. We turn on our computers and we no longer have to wait for our dial up modem and the silly connections noises to come on anymore. We click our Internet Explorer desktop icon or our Safari button and we are good to go.

I don’t think newspapers thought readers were actually going to read the “newspaper” on their online sites. It was merely thought of as an afterthought for when the public was finished with the print article or after processing the evening news information.

The content is entirely free, so it’s not exactly surprising that people go directly online for their news information. Despite the “sickening financial slide” going on in journalism, no newspaper is going to be able to charge $20 a month in reader fees. $20 a year may be a bit more practical.

Actual print newspapers are overwhelmed by enormous newsprint, production and delivery costs. Which is financially devastating to companies we all know and acknowledge because slowly but surely the print version will become so minute. Most of us have Internet inside of our homes and some of us have it inside of our phones. Whose not to say that in five years, our newspapers won’t be delivered to our Blackberry every morning? For some people this is already reality.

Print newspapers require a fee in order to be delivered. Why can’t the Internet be the same? I love that the news on the Internet is free, but if newspaper companies are going to flounder, we won’t have news anymore! So it’s become this give and take, push and pull situation. Journalism online is a double-edged sword: we don’t want to pay for news, but the news relies on fees in order to run.

We expect the Internet news to be free because it was introduced to us as totally free. Which I feel was the first mistake.