The Cincinnati and Kentucky Post daily newspapers have printed their final pages this past Monday. December 31, 2007 marks the death of a 126-year-old daily newspaper reducing Cincinnati, OH to a "one-paper town", in terms of dailies of course. The Cincinnati Post was an afternoon daily newspaper barred from becoming a morning daily, as well as being barred from Sunday, by its owner and chief competitor The Enquirer. The two daily papers maintained separate news rooms and staff, but the Post was corralled by its afternoon-ONLY restriction and was therefore set on a course to which it could not recover from.
On a positive note, The Kentucky Post will continue to hold its name and methods by reporting via the web at KYPost.com.
There seems to be fewer and fewer printed newspapers as we move forward. The web is the new wave carrying news to consumers everywhere. It is fast and global which makes web news the premier outlet. As I’ve said before there is still a huge loyal following of printed newspapers in the world.
Can we hold a healthy balance between printed news and electronic news?
This shift affects many people and industries. As newspapers die off, people lose their jobs in printing presses and newsrooms. Paper manufacturers and deliverers lose business.
I like receiving my news online. Its convenient and cheap. I do not think that papers will completely disappear for a long while.
As usual, a great piece.
The question you posed–Can we hold a healthy balance between printed news and electronic news?–is, I would argue, the major question facing the news industry today.
There are many people in America who get their news from newspapers as well as Internet; usually the paper earlier in the day and the Internet later in the day for updates. However, on the flip side, there are people who soley get their news from the Internet.
The latter is the problem facing the industry. Newspapers can deal with sharing–consumers picking up the paper, as well as getting some news from the Internet on a single day. But, quite obviously, it’s hard to deal with people not picking up the paper at all.
Some European countries like Britain, notably its capital of London, are not seeing the problem we are here in America. Their print dailies are stronger than ever. It seems that they’ve struck that balance you mentioned (for now, at least.)
The question you posed was a good one. Time will only tell, I suppose.
But I still like getting my fingers dirty with news-print from my New York Post and New York Sun.