While reading the article about the "death" of the newspaper industry, I had many of my own assumptions confirmed. Journalism, regardless of the form that it takes, is a service that many people look to on a daily basis. It provides people with exposure to a world beyond their own sphere of influence and allows them to quickly consume information that they would otherwise not have time to cultivate for themselves. For this very reason there will always be a place for it in our society and journalism isn't going anywhere.
However, there a numerous things that obviously contributed to the newspaper "crisis" being believed to be more sever than it really was. For example, while journalists do report facts, they also rely heavily on emotional responses from sources to frame their stories in order to seek the attention of potential readers. This limited resource that we discussed last week is also why the focus of journalism is most often placed on the people affected and not the actual numbers or state of the business that is being covered. In this way it isn't surprising to find that things become exaggerated and our view is so episodic in nature that it becomes difficult to see over-arching trends.
While journalism is here for the long-term, markets do fluctuate and competition doesn't seem to exist the same way in every industry. As reported in this article there are very few cities (just 20 in the United States) that are serviced by more than one newspaper. With those ups and downs, and our desire to understand the cause of them, it isn't surprising that journalists hesitate to place blame for their situation on themselves. This is a natural human reaction to any type of problem to first look to outside factors. If people do look to themselves first, they are admirably rare. Regardless of the location for blame, journalism isn't dying, it's just having to fight a little harder for the attention of individual people.
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