Looking back at one of the first American newspapers, The New England Courant, it is clear that Americans never intended for our news to be simply conventional but rather on the cutting edge. James Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s older brother, and his fellow writers took a more daring approach by filling their paper with satirical letters and essays rather than drab formalities and governors addresses. Looking back, the stories they wrote may not have been quite “newsworthy” but the message remains – news is constantly changing, in style or medium, in order to keep up with the times and demands of the readers.
In the article Out of Print published in The New Yorker, Eric Alterman explores the birth and death of print journalism. He attributes that, “among the most significant aspects of the transition from “dead tree” newspapers to a world of digital information lies in the nature of “news” itself.” Democracy has been heightened with the public valuing more history and less mystery by demanding less “gospel like” news from single sources. People now want up to date, able to discuss information.
Alterman further goes on to discuss The Huffington Post and its incredible impact on the Internet era of news. Jonah Peretti, co founder of the page explains to him that the site has grown from the ideology that news is not something handed down from above but “a shared enterprise between its producer and its consumer.” Peretti goes on to explain that while the site does have its flaws, (little original content, no sports/books pages, entertainment section consisting of mostly trashy gossip) they have a unique editing system. They have created a very reliable and professional front page of the site while the rest inside the site is usually not reviewed by an editor and is user-generated content.
Bloggers Taylor Owen and David Eaves gave their 2 cents on the internet, newspaper decline and democracy in their piece Missing The Link: Why Old Media Still Doesn’t Get The Internet. It gives insight on the necessity that blogging and print journalism are mutually beneficial and that this fact must be accepted. They provide a hopeful tone that print journalism can still succeed in the Internet era and that those who think democracy will suffer because of the changes are simply ignorant. They state that “the divide between “new” media of blogs and “old” media of newspapers is largely mythical and increasingly being bridged”. Though the future is uncertain, these bloggers offer a sense of hope for those who truly "get" blogging and a sense of relief for those who are wise enough to learn from other sources than their hard copy newspapers.
It has been made clear that while print journalism seems to be on it's way out and new era Internet news sources and blogs are on their way to the top, we need to find a balance. Democracy is here to stay, but where will it be displayed? That is up to us to answer now.
