The Future of Newspapers as a Print Medium

Two professors at SJSU found this old newspaper while renovating a local house for a Habitat for Humanity project. I like the expression on their faces as they look at the remnant for days gone by, a piece of history that is there but is literally crumbling.

This reminds me of the current newspaper debate - will papers be around in paper form in large quantities. Personally I like having news thats transportable and can be passed around easily, though links for online articles and papers can, of course be exchanged. Still, not everyone has access to the Internet, computers, etc. whereas the price of a paper tends to be cheap and accessible to most people.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel, where I did my internship, and The Pinnacle, where I worked after, both have online forms, the form of which has a lot of content not in the paper. Part of that is because the former paper has more staff, including people whose sole job is to run the online addition and is a daily, whereas the Pinnacle has a small staff that shares jobs and in particular the second photographer position which had been full-time is now a part-time support position. Both papers have had layoffs, the first recently and both The Mercury News and The San Francisco Chronicle, both which have online presence have also had layoffs of staff.

In contrast, the paper I work for now does not have a large online presence. We don't put articles or photos online, and on the page is just contact information and articles written about our paper.

So in way, I'm the online archiver with this blog. My editor who I've talked to about putting this online thinks it's cute that I have the paper online, but it's not part of his strategy. I'd like to see us online, but I do know people read our hard version, they tell me too all the time. I don't know what the future holds, but I would like to see us online more, and I do think our paper has what it takes to last the test of time.