The Future of Journalism. For the first time, more and more people are getting their news online than from traditional ink and paper. So it is believed that print papers will continue to shrink and the Internet will continue to grow, serving the newspape

Many newspapers still have employee and cost bases that were based on the industry’s successful years and now they are worrying about the costs of labor, the cost of paper and the postal rates. Therefore many newspapers are cutting jobs and salaries and they will not start hiring again before they start to generate more revenues from ads or subscriptions which is very unlikely to happen because many newspapers have already started to shut down. According to moneyweek.com The New York Times is approaching bankruptcy, the LA Times and Chicago Tribune are already there and the 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer shut down its print edition and went online-only.  Some of the public newspaper companies have also been crucified by their investors. The McClatchy Company, which made the biggest bets on the future of the industry by buying The Knight-Ridder chain, has seen the value of its stock drop 98 percent over the past five years. The newspaper industry has entered a period of dreadful change.  Some good old papers are shutting down. Others are reorganizing their debts under bankruptcy protection. Even the most successful are jacking up prices, experimenting wildly with their digital and print editions. Luckily there’s still a bit of hope for newspaper industries. Newspapers have always been ready to act when it was needed. When they introduced the free dailies their revenues sky rocketed and even now a lot of free dailies attached to the newspaper are printed. According to iMedia they still account for 8 %( 28m copies) of daily circulations. They still are the most adequately staffed local providers of news and information and they still have some time to take advantage of their strengths and move quickly into new and still-developing platforms. But to do this, they’ll need to be nimble and fast.

Newspapers need to stop trying to save the old business or searching for new business models and instead figure out what needs are going in the market for news  and then be first in the market to deliver breakthrough solutions. The newspaper industry is into some really unpleasant situation, one that will require lots of change, including delivering news and information in lots of different ways. It’s time to go on the offensive and renovate their businesses around the changing needs and demands of their customers. The difficulty lies in that much of their future may not involve paper, and the industry is having a hard time changing its name. They need a different form of ownership, one that values journalism, believes in public service and is unwilling to strangle newspapers for their short-term cash. They need to increase their presence on the internet and meanwhile that would also reduce many of their costs. They would have less printed pages, move away from less profitable circulation and they could also outsource many of their functions including printing as well. The internet will also indirectly help them reduce their cost by allowing them to be printed out efficiently in the home, thus saving the costs of big presses, circulation departments and production departments.

By definition, news has a short shelf life. So in many cases, consumers want to know about news as soon as it happens. That could be the kind of news that everyone wants, like the latest transfers in football or latest results, or it can be very personal, like one of your stocks just went way up or down, or the road you normally use to drive home from work is closed because of an accident. The fact is the consumer now wants to participate in deciding how and when they get each type of news and who they get it from. Technology has enabled people to get the kind of information you are looking for as soon as ever. By having your cell phone connected with internet or having a Kindle you will always be able to find what you are looking for in a minute. It all comes down to the internet again and a lot of newspapers have realized that the customers need their information fast and the only way to provide it to them is via internet. Lots of newspaper companies have already embraced the online technology for the strengths it does offer. Some of the most successful newspapers in US and Europe are transferring their routine content online. They are also investing to find the right combination of newsprint and online distribution. Websites can also encourage readers to submit their own narratives and comment on the subject to the site for inclusion, therefore by offering them a chance to participate and contribute in the story itself. The most difficult stage for newspapers is right now when they are shifting from the traditional way to online and the owners are well aware that in the short run they will not be making profit but the long run can be promising for them. Newspapers are going to need to tailor their online content to make it more like existing print media formats if they are to profit in the digital marketplace and charge for their online content.

The Internet has several advantages over newspapers. First stories are now repeatedly broken first on the Web, before moving to TV and print ssecondly, the internet has a fantastic search capability, through the search engines like Google, making news stories more visible. Surfing through the internet has now become a more popular culture while reading newspaper has becomes an inferior culture since less people are willing to spend their time on the paper Traditionally, the newspapers were there to deliver news. Now by the time people read stuff in the papers they have already been exposed to google.com or cnn.com. The time has come where newspapers are integrating into the internet and they are looking more as alternative commentary providers. Is it no wonder that advertisers and sponsors have started to follow this migration as well. But will this all mean the newspaper industry is going to an end? The big problem is that not necessarily do readers online bring the revenue that print readers do. People look at fewer pages online than they do in print. Sometimes one single paper reader is worth as ten online. All this in some way is making the web editions less valuable to advertisers and in some cases even advertisers themselves are not sure where to invest their money in.

Newspaper circulation is going down but not as sharply as the critics are making us believe it. Newspapers are a long way from being dead even though business is definitely headed in a new and bold direction. News starts with reporters, and most of them work for newspapers. What's worse is the effect this will have on all media. Internet and other media stations already have very slim news staffs. They rely on newspaper stories as the starting point for many of their own stories. As do magazines. This will affect blogs as well, as they usually write about what's been published elsewhere more people might prefer to read their news on the Internet, but if newspapers actually decline, there simply won't be as many stories to read. And, while national and international news is easy to find online, a possible alternative to newspapers for local news has yet to be developed and the vast majority of newspaper readers say local news is the reason they read the paper. Newspapers also provide a more objective and in-depth reporting on everything from the local school board meeting to the war in Iraq. The average time a reader of a regular newspaper spends with the printed paper is about 40 minutes. The average time a viewer spends on the web site of that paper is about seven minutes. There is a difference between browsing and reading and the Web is built for browsing rather than for reading. When there is a long piece on the Internet, most of us have to print it out to get through it. Another argument why newspaper industry is going to survive is that not everyone has internet access (it only seems like it) and of those who do, not all use the internet as a news source. What if the internet crashed, the news could not be accessed and what would happen if a virus contaminated the internet blog sites? Every single newspaper article would be lost forever, and that is something our society cannot afford. There would also be economical effects. Many people would lose their jobs. The money that comes from them is very helpful for the economy and they are very reliable. There will not be anybody to make the print or the delivery anymore. I can imagine that there are many people who can’t start drinking their morning coffee before the paper boy shows up. The internet it’s just too heavy to read it with the morning coffee.

The news media is in transition and it’s hard to predict what will happen in the next few years with the newspaper industry but the chances are that passionate journalists and readers will not let the newspaper industry turn into a history. In my opinion I don’t think that newspaper professionals should raise the white flag. All they need is a big push which would turn them more aggressive, form partnership with online newspapers, develop new properties and look after new ideas. Some media analysts are even considering this transition time as an exploding opportunity for many journalists to start their new era of journalism. But one thing is for sure. There aren’t going to be 4000 newspapers companies any more and neither will there be ordinary journalists. Those who survive will be multi-channel skilled and they will be the pride of the journalism.

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