Newspapers must adapt to this brave new world

Paper Cuts reports more than 15,055 jobs have been lost to newspaper layoffs and buyouts in 2008.

Stricken with layoffs, declining subscriptions and dwindling advertising dollars, newspapers are struggling to survive in our Internet-saturated world.

Since the early 1990s, daily newspaper readers has declined by about 40 percent. On the other hand, 37 percent of Americans now access news online three days per week.

Americans seeking election news on the Internet was up this cycle was up 23 percent from 2004.

The complications newspapers are facing come down to a lack of understanding how to adapt the newspaper business and journalism itself to this new online world. The Internet, unlike print publications is an active medium that thrives when in engagement. Regurgitating print content on the Web does not suffice.

[Internet] Users want to construct their own experience by piecing together content from multiple sources, emphasizing their desires in the current moment. People arrive at a website with a goal in mind, and they are ruthless in pursuing their own interest and in rejecting whatever the site is trying to pus>. — Jakob Nielsen, Web usability expert

The fall of journalism is journalists’ fault. It is our fault we did not see change coming soon enough and ready our craft for its transition. It is our fault we did not exploit – hell, too many resisted – the opportunities new media and new relationships with the public presented. — Jeff Jarvis, journalism professor at City University of New York.

In the grand scheme of things, what truly matters is how the shrinking newspaper industry will affect democracy. New models of journalism are cropping up everyday, and finally newspapers are embracing — instead of resisting — the Internet.

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” — Thomas Jefferson