If video killed the radio star (yes, I was a teenager in the 1980s), what's killing all the newspapers? The Internet? Too much free news content on news/entertainment Web sites? The fact that people now get much of their news sent to them from family and friends? Have sites like Craigslist destroyed the classified system?
The latest victims: The Tucson Citizen, Arizona's oldest continuously published newspaper (1870). It's printing its last paper tomorrow and then will be online only. On July 23, the Ann Arbor paper, in business since 1835, will be online only.
According to an AFP story:
"Founded in 1870, the newspaper reported on the 1881 gunbattle at the OK Corral in nearby Tombstone, Arizona, the raids of Mexico's Pancho Villa, the 1934 arrest of bank robber John Dillinger and other major events in the region."
The Citizen follows the Christian Science Monitor, Seattle Post-Intelligencer in going online only. The Rocky Mountain News closed altogether. Many of the news bureaus here in DC have been obliterated. Reporters with 30 years of experience are trying to navigate the PR world for a job. (I'm glad I went to Medill when I did and then went into politics). The New York Times is verging on closing the Boston Globe, which it owns. Whole sections are being cut, and some papers, like the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, are merging resources, space and staff
U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin has introduced a bill in the Senate to help newspapers. Washington Gov. Christine Gregroire just signed a bill that gives tax breaks to the newspaper industry (think Seattle Post-Intelligencer).
The new media and technology tools that have dramatically changed the way we advocate, organize our politics and govern have had some pretty serious effects on the newspaper industry as well. Will there only be a handful of papers left when the dust settles?
Let me know what you think.
In the meantime, the Tuscon Citizen penned its own epitaph.
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