Mark Steyn Is Right

The Rocky Mountain News will publish its final edition Friday.

So check the sidebar link to see what is on the website next week and whether it is updated.

If you didn’t know newspapers across the United States are going broke. Denver was one of the last towns to have two newspapers - Detroit’s newspaper only delivers on certain days and San Francisco may not have any newspapers at all soon.

Over the next few years this is what I expect to see happen: Most major newspapers will cease to exist as daily print editions. This includes the NY Times, etc. The ones that continue to exist will likely go toward the British style of essentially tabloid journalism in an attempt to survive. (If you haven’t ever read a British newspaper - here is the Sun. I am not going to recommend it and I am still debating whether to link them on the sidebar. I may eventually - just with a warning. They do contain real news, but primarily they are what we think of in the US as a tabloid.) 

How do I feel about this - I’m torn. I think the internet and the instant news it offers makes newspapers essentially irrelevant as a news conveying source. I also recognize that newspapers have been a bastion of liberal thought for over a generation while pretending to be unbiased - fooling many less intellectually demanding readers. However, I also am afraid as news moves more toward exclusively a net entity any pretext of un-biasedness will be lost, as will any attempt to find middle ground. What will remain will essentially be an ever escalating “screaming match” with both sides advancing the “news” that fits with their cause. Is this healthy? I’m not sure it is. 

I think Chris Rice says it pretty well.