Of all mass media, newspapers have played the leading role in sustaining democracy and championing freedom. Over the years, newspapers have fought heroic battles in places that had little tolerance for differing points of view. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), from 1992 through mid-2015, 1,132 reporters from around the world were killed while doing their jobs. In 2015, CPJ reported that since 1992, the five deadliest countries for journalists have been Iraq (167 killed), Syria (82 killed), the Philippines (77 killed), Algeria (60 killed), and Russia (56 killed). Of those killed, 13 percent died while “performing a dangerous assignment,” 20 percent were killed in cross fire or combat, and 66 percent were murdered.65 In the first half of 2015, 30 journalists and media workers were killed, including 8 in France (the Charlie Hebdo magazine murders in Paris), 5 in South Sudan, 4 in Yemen, and 3 each in Syria and Bangladesh.

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Many journalist deaths in the twenty-first century reported by CPJ came from the war in Iraq. From 2003 to 2011, 225 reporters, media workers, and support staff died in Iraq. For comparison, 63 reporters were killed while covering the Vietnam War, 17 died covering the Korean War, and 69 were killed during World War II.66 Our nation and many others remain dependent on journalists who are willing to do this very dangerous reporting in order to keep us informed about what is going on around the world.

In addition to the physical danger, newsroom cutbacks, and the closing of foreign bureaus, a number of smaller concerns remain as we consider the future of newspapers. For instance, some charge that newspapers have become so formulaic in their design and reporting styles that they may actually discourage new approaches to telling stories and reporting news. Another criticism is that in many one-newspaper cities, only issues and events of interest to middle- and upper-middle-class readers are covered, resulting in the underreporting of the experiences and events that affect poorer and working-class citizens. In addition, given the rise of newspaper chains, the likelihood of including new opinions, ideas, and information in mainstream daily papers may be diminishing. Moreover, chain ownership tends to discourage watchdog journalism and the crusading traditions of newspapers. Like other business managers, many news executives have preferred not to offend investors or outrage potential advertisers by running too many investigative reports—especially business probes. This may be most evident in the fact that reporters have generally not reported adequately on the business and ownership arrangements in their own industry.

Finally, as print journalism shifts to digital culture, the greatest challenge is the upheaval of print journalism’s business model. Most economists say that newspapers need new business models, but some observers think that local papers, ones that are not part of big overleveraged chains, will survive on the basis of local ads and coupons or “big sale” inserts. Increasingly, independent online firms will help bolster national reporting through special projects. In 2009, the Associated Press wire service initiated an experiment to distribute investigative reports from several nonprofit groups—including the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica—to its fifteen hundred members as a news source for struggling papers that have cut back on staff. Also in 2009, the news aggregator Huffington Post hired a team of reporters to cover the economic crisis. Back in 2011, AOL (which purchased the Huffington Post for $315 million) had more than thirteen hundred reporters—most of them for Patch, a hyperlocal news initiative with over eight hundred separate editorial units serving small to midsize towns and cities across the United States. The Patch experiment aimed to restore local news coverage to areas that had been neglected due to newsroom cutbacks.67 But by 2014, AOL had not made money, so it cut these local sites from nine hundred to six hundred and entered into a new joint venture controlled by Hale Global.68 Then in mid-2015, Verizon agreed to buy AOL and the Huffington Post for $4.4 billion.

Among the success stories in digital journalism, ProPublica has published more than a hundred investigative stories a year, often teaming up with traditional newspapers or public radio stations from around the country. It then offers these reports to traditional news outlets for free. In 2010, one story won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Regional examples of this kind of public service news include the Voice of San Diego and MinnPost, both nonprofit online news ventures that feature news about the San Diego and the Twin Cities areas, respectively. Many of these news services have tried to provide reports for news outlets that have downsized and no longer have the reporting resources to do certain kinds of major investigations.

As print journalism loses readers and advertisers to digital culture, what will become of newspapers, which do most of the nation’s primary journalistic work? What role will they play in national elections and the 2016 presidential race? Will more and more people rely on TV ads, Twitter, Facebook, and ever newer social media for the political and policy information that an informed citizenry needs? In many instances, these newer Web sites deliver their readers to newspaper sites where actual reporting and documentation is still being done. But will their readers be able to distinguish an opinionated, partisan blog from actual evidence-based reporting?

John Carroll presided over thirteen Pulitzer Prize–winning reports at the Los Angeles Times as editor from 2000 to 2005, but he left the paper to protest deep corporate cuts to the newsroom. He has lamented the future of newspapers and their unique role: “Newspapers are doing the reporting in this country. Google and Yahoo! and those people aren’t putting reporters on the street in any numbers at all. Blogs can’t afford it. Network television is taking reporters off the street. Commercial radio is almost nonexistent. And newspapers are the last ones standing, and newspapers are threatened. And reporting is absolutely an essential thing for democratic self-government. Who’s going to do it? Who’s going to pay for the news? If newspapers fall by the wayside, what will we know?”69 In the end, there will be no return to any “golden age” of newspapers. The Internet is transforming journalism and relocating where we get our news; the print era is passing the news baton to the digital age.