Fitch Ratings: 'Several cities' could have no daily paper as soon as 2010

Here's a question to throw out to the seasoned vets: Are there any papers that can survive this downturn and continue business without making major cuts in the future? Or is every paper doomed?

 

Other than Sam Zell you mean.

 

I agree, we might be headed to online-only journalism, but that doesn't mean journalism as a career is doomed. It'll just be different.

 

What they said.

 

I have no problem dedicating myself to, and encouraging young people to pursue, careers in journalism.

It's finding the jobs that can support you that is the hard part.

 

Exactly. This is true, no doubt about it. It'll be all freelance on the Internet sites with a few web producers and maybe a copy editor or two, probably no copy editors like the sites at Rivals.com. If you think you can make a career in "journalism" as a part timer, OK. But journalism is done as a career.

 

Who needs copy editors! We have spelcheck?

 

The journalism schools have to be considering closing. Nobody needs to be trained to be a part timer. The newspaper websites and their couple of leftover editors will do the teaching.

 

Journalism isn't done as a career — it's done as a career to just anyone with a journalism degree. Having a degree is no longer a ticket to employment.

 

It should have never been.

 

What I meant by my original statement is that you can likely kiss things like benefits, retirement, etc., goodbye, at least as things stand now. These are the things that created long-term journalists with institutional memory, a deep well of sources, etc.

Journalism as a career will exist -- probably in the model that independent papers exist. No benefits, low, low pay. If it's internet-only, as most of us think it will eventually be, that's the way it's going to be, because the revenues don't support any other financial model right now.

It will morph into a young person's game with little hope of it moving on from that financial station. In the long run, few other than starving artist types are ever going to stick with it. Good luck trying to raise a family on it, it's hard enough as it is.

 

Without accurate information, or at least information trusted to be accurate most of the time, society cannot function. Democratic society especially cannot function. SOME means of dispensing accurate information in return for money will be profitable.
The first city to lose its daily newspaper should be the first city with a news Web site that charges what information costs to produce. That's the only model that works, so far. Let people spend a few weeks or months with no news, and they're likely to be more willing to pay the freight.