Contemplating a World Without Times
The Atlantic’s Michael Hirshorn has a grim assessment of the future of newspapers, specifically the New York Times. Not ten or twenty years from now. This year…
In December, the Fitch Ratings service, which monitors the health of media companies, predicted a widespread newspaper die-off: “Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010.”
Yikes. Blogs and online journalism are revolutionary, for sure. But newspapers like the Times – and the Watertown Daily Times, the Plattsburgh Press-Republican, and the Glens Fall Post-Star in the North Country – pay people to stay on top the bread and butter of news…monitoring governments and their politicians, reviewing court documents, and investigating deeply. Granted, none are perfect, nor is any paper, radio, or TV outlet. But a hemorrhaging of daily beat newspapers would be an unspeakable loss for journalism, and for democracy.
Tags: economy
