9/5/09

While reading this journal I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with the authors about an equal amount. I agree with them that something needs to be done to keep print news papers around; however, I do not believe that we should bail them out. Referring back to our class discussion about this I have to agree with Joanna’s point about how the government should have absolutely no control over our news papers, if they bail them out then technically they would be in control of all news we receive (which really defeats the purpose of the papers since their main goal is to be the “watch dog” for the public). On top of not approving a bail out due to government control, we also physically do not have the money to bail out the papers right now.
It is depressing that daily news papers around the are going out of business or severely downsizing, but the idea of a full on shift to the internet is also an idea that I do not support. If we were to completely nullify physical papers then we would be completely discriminating against individuals who do not have the internet. I think sometimes Americans forget how advanced our country is and they forget to include the less fortunate in their vision of modern day America. Imagine if we did make the shift to all internet news and maybe a large disaster happens where all internet is lost, how would people get their news? If we move to internet how are we supposed to know which sites are credible and which ones are not? I think a good solution would be to move most of the major news papers on line, still keep enough to sell on the streets, and keep small town news papers around. I don’t believe that physical news papers will cease to exist in the future; I think that they will be dramatically altered.