Do Traditional Newspapers Need to Survive?

Short answer: “Yes.”

Newspapers – inky, dirty, tree-using newspapers – do need to survive, despite all the things that make them seem obsolete. In fact, their obsolescence is exactly their hook. Take, for example, radio. Radio was expected to be wiped out entirely by television. It wasn’t. Online streaming took another shot, but radio kept on ticking. Why?

Well, for one thing, it provided something that was incredibly accessible. With the upcoming shift to digital television, not even broadcast tv will be available over the air to anyone with the most basic of equipment anymore. If you can’t afford cable, have an old tv, and didn’t get a handy dandy government coupon, you’re about to be aced out of the tv market. But all you need is a radio – any radio, be it attached to a 70-year-old record player or a new Porsche – and an electrical current and you can get the latest news, music, entertainment, and commentary over your radio dial. When the power goes out and there’s an emergency… Well, they don’t sell emergency hand crank powered televisions, but such radios are in many a home emergency kit.

Likewise, newspapers offer not just a hard copy of the day’s events, but one that can be used regardless of computer literacy, electricity, battery power, etc. The mere fact that newspapers require absolutely no special equipment will be their saving grace. They will have a tough time, though, much as radio did, in transitioning from dominant media force to alternative, “back-up” source.

Cheers!