The assumption that newspapers are “dying” is just crazy,” says Charles Madigan in the Chicago Trubune. His column, however, offers no proof that his assumption is true.
He takes the requisite MSM swipe at bloggers: “in the first place, they [newspapers] are the staging areas for the people who actually collect all the news. Most of media, including the legion of bloggers, feed on what newspapers present. They love reacting to it, but they would be clueless, in many cases, if they had to report and present it.”
Too much peanut butter
“Generally,” Madigan writes, “opinion, in the form of lots of blogging, will be slathered all over it [news], like peanut butter so heavily spread you can’t see the toast anymore.” Yeah, kinda like his column today.
“My bet would be that thinking people will be looking more and more frequently for media to stop, look back and provide some context beyond crashing waves of instant news,” says Madigan. “That’s what newspapers do.”
The news business, Madigan says, has to find a way to satisfy those who want analysis with those who want real-time reporting. I’d agree with that, but it sure doesn’t prove that newspapers aren’t losing readers by the minute.
But hey, don’t worry Mr. Madigan, I read three newspapers a day.
via Romenseko
It’s been my experience that the large dailies are losing some ground. It’s been going on for years. The place to look for solid newspapers is the weeklies and bi-weeklies. The service smaller communities and suburbs but they’ve actually grown some in recent years. Much of this is probably because they’re not competing with TV and the Internet. They report local news like high school sports, festival and other events.
I don’t know that the big ones are dying but they’re going to have to redefine themselves again I suspect.