myth

I have officially had a big boy job for over ten months with USA TODAY. In those ten months, I have encountered a recurring myth time and time again. The myth being that newspapers are a dying industry. I am so tired of people forecasting doomsday. The newspaper isn't dying, it is just adapting. When the radio was invented, the experts predicted it would end record sales. They were wrong. When the television was invented the experts predicted that nobody would ever want to sit and listen to the radio. They were wrong. When the VCR was invented, the experts proclaimed that was the end of movies. Why would anybody pay money and drive to a theater when they could watch a movie at the convenience of their own home? Correct me if I am wrong but 300 just broke the all time for attendance for opening day weekend in March. I could go on and on but I think you get my point. To be successful, newspapers must adopt and I think they are. Newspapers are constantly adopting. Remember if this was 1907 instead of 2007, to buy your newspaper you would go to the street and buy a paper from a boy selling them on the corner. Here are a few ways the industry will still thrive. One, newspapers will no longer be the place for breaking news. Clearly the internet will dominate with breaking news. Newspapers will follow after magazines and be 90% column oriented. Two, newspapers must not ignore the presence of the internet but embrace it. USATODAY.com has created a sophisticated blogosphere where people all over the world contribute. Don't get me wrong, there are fewer newspapers sold then there were ten years ago but it is by a lot less then people think (including Wall Street). USATODAY is still the number 1 selling newspaper in terms of sales with almost 2.5 million copies sold a day. In comparison, the NY Times is around 1.3 million and Star Tribune is about 400,000 per day. Normally, I would have thicker skin then to let naysayers print crap about the industry dying. But what worries me is the best and the brightest youth in the nation will decide to go into other industries. Brilliant future journalists will decide that they should go into pharmacy or biology because journalism is a dying industry. The brilliant marketing and business minds graduating from Harvard and Stanford will read Forbes magazine telling them the newspaper industry is dying and go into different industries. If this is the case, and the best minds go to other fields, then circulation will really decrease because frankly the product won't be as good. This is what worries me the most. Bottom line, the newspaper industry will be just fine. If radio has survived, if movies have survived, then the paper will survive.