Huckleberries Online

Report: Most Papers Gone In 5 Years

Posted by DFO

Dec. 15, 2011 2:31 p.m. • 5 comments

“Most print newspapers will be gone in five years,” says a new report from the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. The forecast by center director Jeffrey I. Cole, based on 10 years of studies, says, “America is at a major digital turning point … We believe that the only print newspapers that will survive will be at the extremes of the medium — the largest and the smallest.” The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal will likely survive, along with some local weeklies, Cole writes/Jeff Sonderman, L.A. Weekly. More here. (AP file photo for illustrative purposes: Final edition of the King County Journal rolls off the presses just after midnight in Kent, Wash. Sunday, Jan. 21, 2007)

Question: Are you among those who believe digital media will almost completely supplant print media in five to 10 years? How will that affect your life, if it comes to pass?

Five comments on this post so far. Add yours!

Eman on December 15 at 3:26 p.m.
Hmmmm I don’t know, as long as men have to sit on the can I expect print on paper will always be around. Even the Romans read in the “Baths” baths being a softer term for communal crapper.
Certainly one could read digitally, but, sometimes a good rustle of the paper is in order. <wink>
Sisyphus on December 15 at 3:39 p.m.
Much less recycling will be needed.
Jay on December 15 at 4:19 p.m.
I discontinued home delivery of the Spokesman 7 years ago when I found more news I was interested in on the internet.
FooMan on December 15 at 7:55 p.m.
In response to Jay—

…and yet you found yourself with time enough to read AND comment on the spokesman website…!
guwruama on December 16 at 10:26 a.m.
I think the worst problem of print newspapers goes to the doctrinal rigidity of how newspapers are made. Much of this comes directly from the university journalism schools that are as orthodox in their instruction as any priesthood.

Ask most journalists about this and they have an almost painful response, that variations to what they were taught absolutely cannot and must not be done. And yet this inflexibility is killing print journalism, which if it could just adapt to changing times, would likely not only survive, but thrive.

Many people have lots of ideas as to how to do this, one of the more popular ones being that newspapers should not hire anyone with a college degree in journalism, because they want to employ reporters, not journalists.

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About this blog

D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.