The fall of the Newspaper

Welcome to the slacker generation. Gossip rules the world. People who sit in the pajamas all day and own 12 cats can determine the outcome of the nation. This is the future of our journalism world. Networking sites have made us lazy and relaxed in the idea that we can always get quality information from a source or friend that we've met. People assume that their contact is all they need even when strong journalism skills are sometimes needed. The Sports Guy, a popular sports critic, has even started picking up on the problems that transition has given us in newspaper reporting. Observing on something as normal as an injured basketball player Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy, claims:

"I grew up reading Bob Ryan, who covered the Celtics for the Boston Globe and remains the best basketball writer alive to this day. Back in the 1970s and early '80s, he was overqualified to cover the team. In 1980, he would have sniffed out the B.S. signs of this KG story, kept pursuing it, kept writing about it, kept working connections and eventually broken it. True, today's reporters don't get the same access Ryan had, but let's face it: If 1980 Bob Ryan was covering the Celtics right now, ESPN or someone else would lure him away."

This clarifies the path that newspapers have started down in recent years. Writers and editors have left for higher paying jobs at internet sites in recent years. This has drained the the quality of the newspapers as well as given a higher quality to the more immediate and faster paced internet sites. The detrimental effect of failing newspapers is the sort that has not yet been seen in both economical, political and journalistic since the start of written press. The fall of the newspaper is something that will affect us all in ways that we will only truly realize after it is gone.