In a seven-page story in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, Eric Alterman (The Nation, Media Matters) writes a riveting piece about the history, evolution, and future of newspapers.

As it has been repeatedly written about, there has been a sharp decline in paper-and-ink newspapers:

• Newspapers have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three years
• The New York Times Company has seen its stock decline by fifty-four per cent since the end of 2004
• Newspaper-wide trends of budget cuts, bureau closings, buyouts, layoffs, and reductions in page size and column inches.

Young people are the driving force behind the change in newspaper dynamics:

Alterman reports that "thirty-nine per cent of respondents under the age of thirty-five told researchers that they expected to use the Internet in the future for news purposes; just eight per cent said that they would rely on a newspaper." (Ironically, as he points out, most newspaper Web sites just aggregate stories from their print editions.)

The original reporting, expertise, and foreign bureaus makes newspapers an indispensable source of information – most blogs wouldn’t exist without the major newspapers, just like this post wouldn't exist without The New Yorker. Some predict that in thirty years newspapers will exist solely online -- the future of print copy is another discussion. Leading blogs like The Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo have democratized news and raised the level of transparency news agencies are held to, but they haven’t replaced the Times. Alterman makes the great case that whatever the medium newspapers are here to stay.
 
This is a must-read piece for anyone thinking about a career in print journalism.