Newspaper Cutbacks

Personally, I cannot stand all the talk about the “death of newspapers” that continues to reverberate across various forms of media. Don’t get me wrong–the newspapers have been fighting hard against the idea of adapting to the changing landscape and they’ve botched this whole process in a number of ways. That said, let’s all just take a deep breath and calm down. Newspapers are still going to be around. They might appear in a different form (probably longer, more in-depth pieces, like a magazine), they’ll have to market themselves differently (to appeal to young non-readers), and they definitely need a way to utilize, and not just use, new media (and when I say  utilize, having a reporter read their story into a webcam is not utilizing…it’s also not interesting).

All that aside, it’s still a rough time because, at the end of the day, newspapers are businesses, and the economic situation is…well…less than ideal. I saw this and found it disturbing–we hear about layoffs here and there, but to see it laid out on Front Street is a little unnerving.