Challenges Facing Newspapers

Printed Page 83

As we’ve seen, newspapers today face a host of challenges—including declines in readership, the inability of most cities to support competing newspapers, the cost of newsprint, and competition from Web sites like craigslist.com for lucrative classified advertising. These problems have raised pressing questions, such as what role newspapers will play in our lives in the coming years and whether this medium can even survive. Given that newspapers are still the most reliable source of investigative reporting and analysis, and that TV and other news sources still rely heavily on them, the image of a world without newspapers is troubling indeed.