News sources have been transitioning from paper to electronic distribution of their news in a rapid transition. Many of these sources have been searching and experimenting with ways to get the news to their subscribers.
The big reason for this switch is because it seems unreasonable to many to receive day-old news with the paper when an article can be written and published in a short amount of time online.
According to Jam Sadar, a news director for WLNS, there will be a point in time that paper journalism will no longer be existent.
“How much do they spend on paper, printing presses, on ink, on the delivery, all the paperboys, all the people who run the delivery?” Sadar said. “They don’t need any of that anymore. They can just spend money on the journalism.”
TV news reporting is also going in the same downward trend that paper reporting is on. According to Jam, this is because people want to run on their own schedule, not the one that the news channel has chosen for them.
Generating revenue is a big challenge for some of these companies. Some have resorted to charging fees to subscribers to view articles written by them. According to Sadar, this has caused people to find other news sources
“I’m guessing fewer people read it but at least they’re making more money on it because just selling digital ads isn’t going to cut [it],” said Jam.
A panel of four journalists consisting of Meegan Holland of MLive, Tricia Bobeda, Paul Henderson of Lansing State Journal, and Sadar discussed how the transition to online publication has gone.
“We did it a year ago, we’re doing successful journalism online, won every public service award last year for journalism and it can be done, good journalism can be done online,” said Holland
According to Henderson, this transition has caused journalism to become a “one man band”
“When professors, teachers, whomever started pushing that one man band face from my understanding was you’re going to be expected coming out of school in 2011 to be able to do all of those things and do them well,” said Henderson.
Jobs are still available with the transition. According to the panel, jobs will continue to exist but many of them will be different from those today.
