There continue to be rumors that some major big city daily newspapers are going to go out of business, or just be an on-line presence. The newspaper business is in free fall, with so much advertising going to sites like Craig’s List, and with circulation numbers hurt by the internet and cable TV news.
Maybe it’s only a matter of time before some newspaper goes out of business. It’s happened before with changes in the media and communications. 50 years ago, most big cities and many smaller ones had both a morning and evening newspaper. Evening newspapers disappeared years ago. Printed newspapers may be the next to go.
The magazine business has the same fundamental problem.
When I was a kid in the NYC area I remember the New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, the New York World Telegram, the New York Sun, the New York Journal American, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Daily Mirror. and the Brooklyn Tablet. When my mother was a child, the Herald, the Tribune, the World, the Telegram, the Journal, the American all were independent papers. I remember at college, spreading out six or seven Sunday papers in the lounge, spending the whole afternoon reading the papers. When I visited San Francisco in 1964, they still had four or five papers there. This used to be a way of life for interested Americans, and we are now at the very end of it. 'Gone with the Wind.'