‘You’re Gonna Miss Us!’

Sobering Factoids: About 1,800 U.S. newspapers have died since 2004, including more than 60 dailies and 1,700 weeklies. Daily newspaper circulation has dropped 63% from its peak of 62.8 million in 1987 to 24.3 million today; 57% of all journalists have lost their jobs since 2008.

 

“[N]ewspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; ‘You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!’ has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?”

—Clay Shirky, journalism technologist and vice provost of educational technologies, New York University, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” Edge, March 16, 2008.

• Editorial Comment: Get me rewrite! Please!

 

PeezPIX

Dumpty, Humboldt Animal Shelter, 2016

 

February's Senior News — Finding Friendship — is out!    

 

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“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”—Tom Stoppard

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Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism