Plugged In: Will Newspapers Survive the Information Age?

Will Newspapers Survive the Information Age?

By Michael Putzel

For centuries, newspapers have served as essential purveyors of information and contributed to the common body of knowledge that enables people to think of themselves as members of a community. They have been the critical source of news from abroad and of the truth about the inner workings of governments. It is practically undisputed that newspapers and other news-gathering organizations are a pillar of democracy and individual liberty.

Having been bruised by the advent of radio and television and the economic forces that have practically eliminated competition for local readers, American newspapers are about to be battered by the advance of new technologies that may make ink-on-paper delivery obsolete. At the very least, the new media will challenge newspapers' traditional sources of revenue and offer readers radically different ways of obtaining information.

The challenge today is to identify the most essential and precious elements of modern American newspapers and explore how those might be preserved and transported into new electronic media. Surely there are practical courses newspapers can take to join the on-line world and exploit the new media. A few dozen experiments already are underway, but to date, no one has demonstrated a viable economic model for whatever it is that will succeed the newspaper as we know it.

Newspapers have evolved into extraordinarily efficient sources of information. Always portable, they have become readily available at the front door, and the information in them is organized in ways that make it easy for readers to quickly scan huge amounts of timely information and read as much--or as little--as they wish of what they find there. The sale of advertising makes it possible for newspapers to offer their products to the reading public at prices far below the actual cost of collecting, editing and disseminating the information contained in them.

Rapid technological progress, however, threatens the underpinnings of the newspaper model.

The cost of producing newspapers is rising, due largely to the recent rapid increase in the price of newsprint, and aging production technology at many metropolitan newspapers will require substantial capital investment in the relatively near term. Meanwhile, the cost of delivering enormous quantities of information to individuals via computer and telecommunications lines is plummeting.

Information itself, including news, increasingly is seen as a commodity with marketable economic value. Whereas newspapers traditionally have gathered, organized and distributed news in its various forms, the real and perceived barriers to others doing so are falling rapidly. In the on-line world, anyone can sell "content," and publication is no longer limited to those with the financial resources to print and distribute multiple copies of the same information.

The most familiar arguments against newspapers and magazines becoming obsolete are that most people don't like to read long stories on computer screens, and computers themselves aren't convenient to carry around the house to comfortable reading places, read on the bus or carry from home to office. Those arguments are sound enough--today. But display technology is advancing to the point that the printed word eventually will appear on screen at least as clearly as it does today on paper. Scientists and engineers say their ability to make computers smaller, lighter and more portable is advancing at the same rapid rate it has for the past 40 years. The progress in battery technology lags behind that in the display, processing and telecommunications fields, but it is quite conceivable that within the next several years readers will carry multimedia devices that exceed all the advantages ascribed to today's newspaper-and fit in briefcases or under readers' arms.

The stupendous growth of the Internet's World Wide Web in the past two years, at a time when newspaper circulation and readership generally are shrinking, suggests that on-line communication will revolutionize the way most people exchange information in the future. At the same time, it is apparent that the sheer volume of information available--whether good or bad, reliable or unchecked--makes the ordinary goal of keeping oneself informed about events both unmanageable and intimidating for ordinary readers. Newspapers should continue to play the vital role of gathering, testing, selecting and prioritizing the information people want and need. It is unclear, however, that they will have the resources to do so. (While my own attention has focused largely on newspapers, probably because I have spent my career in print journalism, I would note that television, a new and threatening medium during my years in print, is struggling with many of the same questions newspapers face as communication becomes interactive.)

Having spent 20 years working with computers and the changing tools of the working journalist, I am familiar with the remarkable advances made by some--and the regrettable failure of many news organizations to adapt to or keep up with new technologies. For the past two years, I have been a working critic of consumer technology, ranging from personal computers and software to commercial on-line services and the Internet.

I see the potential for news organizations to play a critical role in deciding how the public will be informed in the future, but I fear that in this age of rapidly developing technologies, newspapers may not prove fleet enough to make the transition to a new world governed by very different rules. And if they fail, it is hard to imagine that whatever takes their place will find, or even seek to discover, the value system and sense of purpose that made newspapers the underpinning of self-government.

--Submitted to the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication, January, 1996