The costs are not the only problem, with declining circulation you are also getting less in advertising revenue. Advertisements on the internet have made people billionaires. That revenue isn’t coming from companies who added new money to the budget for internet advertising; it has come at the expense of print media; newspapers and magazines.

I agree that the technology today hasn’t replaced newspapers but it’s going to play a major role in the continued downward spiral of newspaper circulation. To some extent you can get your news on you mobile phone now (as long as you don’t mind the slow radiation poisoning –right Ivan) and that technology is only going to get better.

Soon you will be able to sign up for news pieces that will be delivered to you through satellite radio. If newspapers don’t embrace the changing technology they will continue to hampered by lower profits, declining circulation, and loss of overall company value.

Will the internet solely causes this demise? No.

Technology? Yes.

To me the value of a newspaper is in news stories that matter, things that take research, digging and journalism. Thats news that makes a difference, alters policy and changes our lives.

but as the Internet becomes a more convienient way of speading news and frankly much cheaper…it seems the newspaper is left forgetting what its good at and trying to be an expensive rendition of a printed blog link. Medicine Hat New’s “This really happened” segment for example.

They cant be a website, but the truth is a website so far hasnt replaced journalism either. My concern is that traditional news agencies from Newspapers to TV are taking cheap meaningless stories and trying to make it entertaining instead of digging deep and unearthing truths that affect our lives. Of course meaningfull news is more expensive to produce and with shrinking subscriber bases we are seeing the domain of meaningfull news shrink.  Newspapers and news agencies have been a very important part of democracy - but its been seriously dumbed down of late - and you wonder if technology has an answer to step up and fill that void….so far I would say it hasnt.

To make matters worse board directors are questioning the direction of the editorial department. Hello, in two years you have lost 1/3 of your value and your profits are declining and the directors are worried about the editorial direction. It does go to show that the ‘old guard’ is not in touch with today’s society. Times are changing and it is happening much faster than in the past.

Significant technology changes happens in months now compared to years and the large companies that are slow to adapt will be passed by. That is what has happened too many of the large newspaper companies across the world. Companies that complement their electronic content with their paper content will be the ones that succeed.