Are Newspapers Dead?

I'm a 29-year-old master's student in environmental journalism. I returned back to school before the economic meltdown and am now glad I did. It's better to watch the ship sink from a life boat than from an interior deck.

I'm not sure if this is representative of the current situation, but I'm taking an unpaid summer internship with a political magazine in D.C., for which I'll have to take out a significant loan. And by the time I graduate, it's anyone's guess if there will be a job for me.

My professors acknowledge that they don't know the future of journalism, or what kind of business model web-based newspapers will develop on a large scale. Instead they teach multimedia skills, urging us to become versatile in many media - video, audio, web, print.

The dinosaurs will die, along with many of journalism's more romantic elements — ink stains and paper boys — the test will be whether or not its ethics and editorial standards survive, in whatever format.

I think we need to differentiate between "newspapers" in the sense of that object that is delivered every morning wrapped in plastic and stuck in a box at the end of my driveway, versus the content on those pages (as well as the content posted on newspaper's websites) It's clear the thing made of dead trees that gets delivered is an endangered species, but the content still remains king, and until those who own newspapers realize that, the whole industry is in trouble. Blogs, and citizen journalists and hyperlocal content are all okay to a point, but do not replace the work of properly trained journalists who's work has been properly vetted and edited. I often draw this analogy: I can head down to Home Depot, buy some hammers, saws, wood and nails... but that does not make me a craftsman. I can drive a nail, and saw wood in a fairly straight line... but I wouldn't want to live in a house I built. Just because I have the tools, doesn't mean I have the right skills. Newspapers (and by that I mean professional journalistic content creators) need to do a better job stressing to their readers that there is a value to their content. Until they do that, the profession is in jeopardy.