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Due Date: Friday, February 6

Blogger and high school librarian Carolyn Foote writes on her blog about a speech she attended given at the University of Texas by former newspaper editor Molly Ivins. She came away thinking, at least partly, about the future of journalism and how it relates to schools. She writes:

Her [Milly Ivins'] concern that night was the future of journalism; specifically, the future of newspapers.   I have thought of her insights often the last few months.

She was aware that because of the instant availability of news online, that newspapers were going to have to change, and she felt that because large conglomerates have been purchasing many urban newspapers, their main concern has been profits, and not the reporting.   Because newspaper profit margins had increased in the 90’s, owners now have the expectation that newspapers should make higher profits than they had made in the past.  So reporters have been laid off at many large newspapers, and there is more use of “headline” stories, etc.

What do you think? I’ll outline a few of the questions that come to my mind about this situation. Feel free to engage any of them or your own questions in your blog post for this week.

1. Do you think there is a future for print news? If so, what will that future look like? If not, why?
2. What advantages do print publications have over digital news sources?
3. How do you think the job of a reporter will change over time?

A minimal expectation of your blog this week is at least two links to outside sources and synthesis about what those links mean. Much of my Reading Log deals with this issue. As an adviser of a print paper who has been raised in the age of Print News, the potential death of daily print news and the transition to digital is fascinating to me. You’ll find examples of not only exampels of papers that are changing their ways but also examples of what is being done to survive in print form. Find your own examples or pull from existing links. Last year’s students also blogged about this topic early on.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 8:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.