Monday, September 24, 2007

Newspaper Shrinkage

Today I opened my San Jose Mercury News and discovered a smaller paper. I wasn't surprised, though. Yesterday's paper included a note about how the Merc is rethinking its business model as newspapers struggle to compete with online media services. Money is flowing away from print and toward digital platforms, and I can certainly understand why. These days I briefly flip through the front pages of the paper, annoyed that old news, stuff that had been online or even on the 24 hour cable networks, is still 'breaking' in print.

I read that journalism students are rushing to enter the digital age, learning high-end web design even as they learn the inverted pyramid. In the meantime, old papers are shuffled and sometimes discarded as media conglomerates deal out their useless cards. My own paper has been bought and sold recently, and is the only real game in town. Those days of competing dailies (in the morning and in the afternoon) are long gone. I wonder if they'll even sell newspapers a decade from now.

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