The Effect of the Internet on Newspapers

The internet has revolutionized the way the public gets their news. A person can go online for the most up-to-date stories and then can see a video about the story, can read blogs by other people to help them decide how they feel about the issue, and then can post their opinions and insights on a message board, all on a news site and all in one place. The internet has and will have its effect on all sorts of media outlets, but especially newspapers. Newspapers do not have the immediacy of the internet because between the time the newspaper is printed and the time it reaches the public, the news is old and the public has already moved onto newer stories. The newspapers must evolve, and start using the internet as a tool to reach and keep readers. If the newspapers refuse to see the internet as a tool, they will lose advertisers and go out of business. However, some people believe that journalists will always have a place on the internet, no matter how popular “public journalism” becomes, because the public will always have a need for good news writing.

“Clark Gilbert, a business professor at the Harvard Business School, said success on the Internet means seeing ourselves as doing a different job than the one newspapers have traditionally done (“Keys to the Future: News as Watchdog, as Trusted Agent, as Useful Tool”).” In order for newspapers to survive, they must start using all of the new mediums the internet makes available. For example, newspapers must use their website as an accompaniment to the paper version of their newspaper. They could publish a story on the front page and then direct the reader to their website for more content. That content could include a photo gallery of pictures or a video that relates to the story, or a list of other stories that give the reader a different perspective or other stories that have to do with the issue covered in the article that was in the newspaper. Also, by using the internet, the newspaper could post stories around the clock, allowing them to compete with other news sites.

Internet users today are looking for a customizable news experience. They want to be able to shape their interaction with the news and filter out the stories they don’t feel will have anything to do with their lives. A newspaper must give readers the ability to change their news experience via their websites in order to survive the growth of the internet. “‘It's about making news more of a one-to-one product,’ said Howard Finberg, The Poynter Institute's director of interactive learning. ‘We need to figure out how to produce what a single consumer needs to survive in a complex world (“Keys to the Future: News as Watchdog, as Trusted Agent”).’”

The internet has introduced the public to the idea that they can not only control their news experience, but also write their own news. Citizen journalism and blogging has started to draw people away from the formal news sources, including newspapers. Newspapers must start accepting these new forms of journalism in order to survive. “Howard Weaver, vice president for news at McClatchy, said much the same thing: ‘It's not just professional news or citizen journalism; sometimes it's professional news AND citizen journalism. You can use some professional standards with citizen input’ to produce a whole new kind of news (“Keys to the Future: News as Watchdog, as Trusted Agent, as Useful Tool”).” Newspapers cannot have a reporter everywhere all the time, so sometimes, the ordinary citizen is the only person to see a major event. Those citizen journalists will then be able to write an article about what happened and then the newspapers will publish their story, provided the citizen journalist followed the newspaper’s guidelines.

The biggest effect the internet has had on newspapers is that they must learn to expand into other types of media and other sources for their stories. Their websites have to become both an accompaniment to their print publication and a site that can stand on its own for readers outside of their circulation area. Newspapers must be willing to change to survive. “Ideally, newspapers and the Internet complement each other, such as when a reader comes across something new and interesting in a newspaper, and then digs deeper on the subject using the Internet (“Read all about the newspapers’ future”).”

“'The new and troubling reality for newspapers is that even if they excel as purveyors of information to appreciative audiences, they still face tough business terrain. ‘They can try to be the destination where you go online and [can] be really successful with citizen journalism and blogs,’ says Lauren Rich Fine, a Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst who has covered the industry since the 1980s, But such innovations are ‘not going to pay a lot of bills’…Consumers are shifting decisively to online information, says Fine, especially the young (“Net to Newspapers: Drop Dead”).”

The biggest thing that will make a newspaper successful, whether it is printed or online, is good writing. The public will not trust anything written that doesn’t use basic grammar and spelling rules. “Newspapers hold an edge in terms of actual editing and intelligible writing compared with often incoherent ramblings spewed forth on too many blogs…Newspapers are not dead (“Read all about the newspaper’s future”).”