Online Journalism and the Future of Paper-and-Ink

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In a recent statement, Los Angeles Times Editor Russ Stanton admitted that “I don’t see us as a direct competitor to the New York Times any more.” As the reputation of the LA Times has dwindled in the past years—more-or-less since being purchased by the Tribune Company—it has slowly lost its status as one of the countries “papers of record,” and its readers and critics will not be shocked by Stanton’s statement. But to hear it straight from the man at the top (well, not counting Sam Zell—but I won’t get into the issues of a Los Angeles paper being running out of a Chicago office here and now) is a testament to how bad things are at the Times. Ad sales are down, subscriptions are down, the newsroom staff has been cut in half. The newspaper box on my corner—no perfect barometer, but possibly telling—is found to hold the current day’s paper only sporadically.

What does the future hold for the Times? With a number of papers having shut down all together in the past year, some having gone online only and even the Gray Lady herself having to borrow against her famous and nearly priceless Manhattan headquarters building, the outlook is certainly grim. Talk of the demise of print publishing—both periodicals and books—has gone on for a number of years now, but the current economic climate has made the doomsday scenarios seem more and more plausible. There are, however, Internet news champions who see the end of print journalism as something to rejoice. No more wasting trees! No more ink-stained fingers! And even those that aren’t cheering what they consider to be paper-and-ink newspapers final days, plenty are arguing that online-only journalism can be better and more successful than its old school counterpart. With the triumphs of websites like The Huffington Post or the huge sale of Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily, there are certain bright spots that those who champion the new wave can point to. But the point that isn’t made often enough is how dependent a website like The Huffington Post is on traditional print journalism. As a news aggregator, a large proportion of its front page content on any given day or hour was written by a paid, career journalism professional. Blogs too very often depend on print content, with posts commenting, analyzing or referencing stories that originate with more traditional sources of new/culture/opinion. In other words, the blogosphere/twitterverse might suddenly seem a very boring place if the current, struggling model of paying individuals to do serious investigative reporting and long-form journalism—the kinds of research and writing that is straining the budgets of papers like the LA Times and others across the country.

This is not to say that nothing should change. To the contrary, change in media/journalism is inevitable; it is already happening. But as the ways in which we access and digest written content continue to develop—from breaking news to investigative reports to cultural criticism and beyond—we shouldn’t forget cultural institution like the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times. Both papers have certainly had their faults over the years, but they’re more integral to our culture—beyond their capacity as new sources—than we may realize. And if we write them off, write print journalism off, we might find ourselves regretting that decision not too far down the road.

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