Newspapers…Bye Bye Bye.

Okay so for an assignment this weekend we had to do some research on Google vs. Newspapers and It got me thinking about the future of newspapers. So here is a few of my thoughts on the topic.

The recent recession has been showing its effects in all of the industries across America, so it’s no surprise that it’s starting to hit the newspaper world. Recently many newspapers all over the country have had to fold or lay off tons on their writers. In times like these people always want to point the finger at someone and some newspapers are beginning to point their fingers at Google. These papers are saying that Google has destroyed their revenue, and it’s their fault and spam filled and fact-lacking searches that are the reason these papers are folding. I have to beg to differ. I believe that Google and newspapers are two completely separate things, and one should not be blaming the other for its fall in revenue.

One big problem is that newspapers are saying that Google has taken away a lot of their ads that fill the middle pages and no one reads, therefore their revenue is falling and they are laying people off left and right. Before I begin even debating this I want to take a minute to touch on one topic. The world is moving into a mobile phase, they want everything with them at all times; their phones, internet, books, and music. So it’s only a matter of time before the newspaper in actual print is done away with. People even have the Kindle now, so they don’t have to carry around actual books. What I’m trying to say is that I predict in a decade or so the printed newspaper will be done with anyway, and these papers will get most of their revenue from their website.

This leads me to my next point. Google is not a newspaper. It does not update its own stories; it is simply a database of stories. If you want a story on pickles, you can Google pickles, it’s that simple. Which is actually the case is that Google is helping these newspaper websites. If someone hears about a story and Google’s it, it can lead to a story on The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal websites. It acts as a buffer, this way people done have to go to these website themselves to search around and find a story they want to know about, but at the end of the day they will end up at some newspapers websites and read the story they want to hear about.

So in the end, the newspapers have no one they can really point the finger to. The only case they might have is pointing a finger at the changing times and what people really want. The fight between Google and the newspapers is kind of like Radio vs. TV. TV came out and was better and people began to have an easier access to it. So now today most families won’t sit around a radio to listen to a TV show. So my message to the newspapers of the world is, Times are changing. Get used to it.