The failing newspaper industry is hurting America's Democracy: Steve Yorio's view

The newspaper industry has changed dramatically from the way it used to be. Chris Hedges explains how the decline in the amount newspapers circulating the country is due to the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and responsibility to inform the public. The internet played a role in this because information has moved away from being displayed as print and is now it is portrayed through the use of rapidly moving images. Even though the internet has played a big part in the declination of print news, it could never fully replace it. The process of gathering news cannot be done completely by the internet, although, the way of doing this now must compete with the newer, bigger, ideologically motivated group that rules the way views and information are distributed.

Newspapers help to keep citizens everywhere informed about what is going on in their communities as well as activities and events all over the nation. Internet news runs into problems when providing local news because not every community can be accounted for. A newspaper for each local community provides much more information about occurrences in that particular area. Another issue with internet news sources is that not everyone has the means to access this information. The internet, however, is making it increasingly difficult for newspaper companies to succeed in an online format because, according to Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, sites like Google can profit more because it can sell advertising very cheaply, it doesn't have to employ legions of editors, journalists, photographers, etc, it uses servers and algorithms to publish content. The business model of newspapers, which based on the papers’ circulation and advertising revenue, has become ineffective due to the internet’s growth in popularity.

This has proven to be a travesty for our country’s newspaper industry as well as our democracy. Television and the ability of the internet to instantly report news has nearly destroyed the existence of print based media. Since electronic news sources have created great convenience in terms of acquiring information, the question at hand is, why save a failing medium? The world is progressing into a new, electronic way of providing news to citizens. We need to embrace this new medium and let these newspapers either die off, or find a way to unite them with the internet so as not to hurt our democracy. It does not make sense to put more money into a failing industry.