As the internet mushroomed in the 1990s and information became technologically omnipresent, one traditional source of news and analysis began to flounder: the great American newspaper. In the last two decades the decline of large city papers in the United States has been precipitous and shocking. The reasons behind this fall are still not clearly understood, particularly by those within the newspaper industry. The newspapers' response to their problems has also been called into question, especially the dilution of content and the reduction of staffs. And there is growing concern that a democratic republic without a vigorous press augurs poorly for an informed electorate and a healthy society. Richard Tofel's considerable experience as a newspaper executive gives his assessment of these events an insider's perspective. His piece is filled with fresh insights and astute conclusions.

The future of newspapers is hotly contested. Pessimistic pundits predict their imminent demise while others envisage a new era of participatory journalism online, with yet others advocating increased investment "in quality journalism" rather than free gifts and DVDs, as the necessary cure for the current parlous state of newspapers. Globally, newspapers confront highly variable prospects reflecting their location in different market sectors, countries and journalism cultures. But despite this diversity, they face similar challenges in responding to the increased competition from expansive radio and 24 hour television news channels; the emergence of free "Metro" papers; the delivery of news services on billboards, pod casts and mobile telephony; the development of online editions, as well as the burgeoning of blogs, citizen journalists and User Generated Content. Newspapers’ revenue streams are also under attack as advertising increasingly migrates online. This authoritative collection of research based essays by distinguished scholars and journalists from around the globe, brings together a judicious mix of academic expertise and professional journalistic experience to analyse and report on the future of newspapers. This book was published as special issues of Journalism Practice and Journalism Studies.

The impact of cyberspace on newsprint journalism is at the core of this text. After a brief history of U.S. news dailies and weeklies it turns attention to those journals' status today. A wide range of forces that impinge on their success and failure are explored, including the decline of their relevancy for an increasing percentage of the population. Newspapers' prospects for the future is the primary focus as papers curtail their dependency on historically physically-delivered patterns to shift to more economical and faster methods of supplying the news. Rivals for the attention of traditional readers are burgeoning. Possibilities for the outcome over the next decade are investigated. The profound effects of change on newsrooms, advertising, circulation, economics, and the place of newspapers and their communities are fully examined.

Looks at the emerging phenomenon of online journalism, including Weblogs, Internet chat groups, and email, and how anyone can produce news.

Media business that mostly relies on ad revenue requires an audience that consists of happy and economically able consumers. Media business that mostly relies on reader revenue requires an audience that consists of frustrated and politically strangulated citizens. The media not only address these audiences; they create and reproduce them.All we knew about journalism was related to a news business funded by advertising. Advertising has fled to the internet. The entire media environment is shifting. The media are forced to switch to another source of funding - selling content to readers. However, they cannot sell news, because news is already known to people whose media consumption is increasingly centered on social media newsfeeds. Instead, the media offers the validation of already-known news within a certain value system and the delivery of the "right" news to others. The business necessity forces the media to relocate the gravity of their operation from news to values.Media outlets are increasingly soliciting subscriptions as donations to a cause. To attract donations, they have to focus on 'pressing social issues'. However, for better soliciting, they must also support and amplify readers' irritation and frustration with those issues. Thus, the media are incentivized to amplify and dramatize issues whose coverage is most likely to be paid for. Ideally, the media should not just exaggerate but induce the public's concerns.The ad-driven media manufactured consent. The reader-driven media manufactures anger. The former served consumerism. The latter serves polarization.Because the largest mainstream media outlets in the US, both liberal and conservative, performed incredibly well in commodifying Trump in the form of soliciting subscriptions as donations to the cause, the rest of the media market has started moving in the same direction.The need to pursue reader revenue, with the news no longer being a commodity, is pushing journalism to mutate into postjournalism. Journalism wants its picture to match the world; postjournalism wants the world to match its picture. The media are turning into crowdsourced Ministries of post-truth not because of some underlying conspiracies but due to their business needs and the settings of a broader media environment. This book is about the origins and propelling forces of this mutation. The book explores polarization as a media effect, seeing polarization studies as media studies.Andrey Mir (Andrey Miroshnichenko) is a media scholar and journalist with twenty years in the print media. He is the author of "Human as Media. The Emancipation of Authorship" (2014) and a number of books on media and politics. His dissertation in journalism and linguistics (1996) focused on the linguistics of the Soviet media and propaganda. He lives in Toronto, Canada. His blog: Human as Media (human-as-media.com). Twitter: @Andrey4Mir

In 2000, after the Tribune Company acquired Times Mirror Corporation, it comprised the most powerful collection of newspapers in the world. How then did Tribune nosedive into bankruptcy and public scandal? In The Deal From Hell, veteran Tribune and Los Angeles Times editor James O'Shea takes us behind the scenes of the decisions that led to disaster in boardrooms and newsrooms from coast to coast, based on access to key players, court testimony, and sworn depositions. The Deal From Hell is a riveting narrative that chronicles how news industry executives and editors--convinced they were acting in the best interests of their publications--made a series of flawed decisions that endangered journalistic credibility and drove the newspapers, already confronting a perfect storm of political, technological, economic, and social turmoil, to the brink of extinction.

News and journalism are in the midst of upheaval: shifts such as declining print subscriptions and rising website visitor numbers are forcing assumptions and practices to be rethought from first principles. The internet is not simply allowing faster, wider distribution of material: digital technology is demanding transformative change. Out of Print analyzes the role and influence of newspapers in the digital age and explains how current theory and practice have to change to fully exploit developing opportunities. In Out of Print George Brock guides readers through the history, present state and future of journalism, highlighting how and why journalism needs to be rethought on a global scale and remade to meet the demands and opportunities of new conditions. He provides a unique examination of every key issue, from the phone-hacking scandal and Leveson Inquiry to the impact of social media on news and expectations. He presents an incisive, authoritative analysis of the role and influence of journalism in the digital age. Online supporting resources for this book include downloadable lecture slides.