Citizen McCaw

Blog Post #13

Citizen McCaw

Chapter 5: “The Future of Newspapers”

Selling news and information will always make a profit, but distributing news on newsprint will not.  Though audiences have splintered the high cost of professional reporting and editing remains the same.

Why is reporting and editing expensive?

Besides the fact most news coverage newspapers have gone digital, news reporting and editing remains expensive because the old ways of selling ads have diminished. According to the article by Jon Mitchell, These Designers Did for Fun What News Sites Can't Do to Save Their Business, Journalism faces a disjuncture "between the time put into the story and the value of the product,” Mule director of strategy Erika Hall says. The old ways of reporting the news are expensive, and the old ways of selling ads are diminishing in value. That’s unsustainable. News organizations know it, Hall believes. “There’s this visceral drive to the future,” she says, describing the urge in the news industry to innovate the crisis away. “But it’s held back by nostalgia.” Evening Edition news doesn’t solve the problem of the tremendous cost of news reporting. But it costs little to build and run, and it delivers tremendous value that might eventually pay for original news gathering. The value of the service is its exceedingly simple package. “This is just a small demonstration,” Hall also points out. To grap it all out we can say a sense of nostalgia drive back by media news owners is the main reason why reporting and editing will still remain expensive.