PressEthic

In a 2004 study completed byThe Project for Excellence in Journalism, it was determined that newspaper readership has gone down 10% in the last 14 years. At this rate, newspapers will be close to extinct by the time I’m 60 years old. As a student in the newspaper concentration, it looks like I’m out of the job. Just in the few days of classes here at NYU I’ve noticed this trend. During our orientation, in talking to other students, I was hard pressed to find another newspaper student. They were out there, but definitely overshadowed by the magazine and broadcasting students.

Technology is no doubt a problem. Why buy a paper and throw it out the next day, when the news can easily be viewed on a computer screen. Not only can the news be read in this form, but listened to and watched with interactive audio and video links. Cellphones and even ipods are also to blame. Fifteen years ago, subway riders read the paper on their way to and from work on the subway. Why read the newspaper on your ride back to Brooklyn, when you can catch up with your sister -in-law or listen to the new Kanye West? Frankly, I think people get bored with the newspaper. I am not talking about newshounds like us, but everyday Americans. Reality T.V. watching, tabloid buying, Price is Right America. The newspaper just doesn’t keep up with the every increasing pace of this world. As one articulate blogger said it on Visual Editors.com

Right now, it is becoming easier to get wrapped up in the seamless lifestyle and political views of our choosing and never consider the alternatives. To read the newspaper, to wade through the swamp of stats, context, and conflicting ideas, to tempt confusion and hesitation, well -- that is not an option for the savvy-minded. Rather, we use blogs and fake news as an efficient way of staying somewhat informed and, at the same time, envisioning the world.

Why do papers feel the need to use pictures of dead victims of Katrina? Most people would rather see, and rather believe an image that they see. Who wants to wade through an entire story about the body counts, when a quick glimpse at a picture will give them all they think they need to know, and save time and brain cells in the process. News on T.V. is another outlet. Plunking yourself on the couch and letting the news seep in, how easy is that? But some tv news is kind of fluffy. Sure its good to balance the serious with some lighter stuff, but news programs, namely morning editions, that include excerpts from the previous nights reality tv garbage or even worse trashy night time dramas are the worst. The New York Observer released a story about Good Morning America now being affiliated with Desperate Housewives in order to boost their sagging ratings.(See September 16 Edition of The Observer: "Charle Gibson Cuddles Housewives", By Rebecca Dana. Sorry, but I couldn't get the link to work!) The show will now feature weekly “around the water cooler” segments, where they talk about what happen on the previous episode, showing of “secret scenes, and even using the show to make features of their own. For example, tracking down real-life desperate housewives!? I am sad that they even still exist.

News is so out. Hell, George W. Bush doesn’t even read the paper. Our own president of the United States, would rather get his daily briefings “filtered” by his top aides! I know he’s a busy guy, but if I was in his position I would think filtering wouldn’t be the best policy. I’d want to know the crap people were saying about me, because then maybe I would clue in to what I was doing wrong. That the president of the U.S. doesn’t even read the newspaper is a sure sign that times are-a-changing. Hey maybe we should all stop reading the newspaper first hand, get our news filtered, let hundred of Southerners drown in the aftermath of a hurricane, and live in a bubble called the White House? Right………