“Honey, will you fetch me the morning paper from the doorstep?” said no middle-aged family man in the last decade ever. The next generation will soon enough not even know what a paper boy is unless they are watching Napoleon Dynamite, reading To Kill a Mockingbird or on the lap of their grandpa listening to him talk about his first job he ever had as a young boy. News flash, print journalism is out and new digital media news sources are in and here to stay. Now it is not to say that print newspapers will not be around any longer, they will just have much less of a presence in timely news. They are like vinyl records, out of style, but vintage and not going anywhere anytime soon (McNair). If print journalism is decline, then what is essentially replacing that is the rise in innovation and new outlets in the realm of news. In 2017, it is as if this generation single handedly created a new world of journalism that has been for the most part un tested but is unfolding right before our eyes. There is no hard governing for the rules of journalism, that is why todays lines of good journalism is blurred and in need for the distinction between what qualifies as news versus journalism because both exist. Print Journalism is essentially coming to an end and new digital based media is emerging out of the mass influx in the rise of technology. Journalism is alive more than ever with new platforms for news media, the demand for real news and how this new journalism plans to sustain itself. This foreseeable shift from print to digital, ultimately has and will change the face of journalism making it more alive than ever before.

 Fake news is a phrase tossed around far too often in today’s news cycle and the one thing that this leads back to is journalists themselves. The vitality of real journalism in today’s society is timelier for the proximity of our nations wellbeing than ever before. Someone scrolls through their Facebook feed and see’s that, Obama is planning a coup de tout in the coming months for the sake of the people from Donald Trump. The level of simply false and cringe worthy news that is circulating unregulated on Facebook, one the world’s largest social media platforms is unreal (Collins). Journalists in turn are taking the heat for fake news when in reality, it comes down to user association because anyone can simply share information that takes no effort, journalism is the process by which information in our world is told, and what they do with it, is real objective journalism (Craft & Davis 89). The time now more than ever is for real objective journalism. Journalism as an entity is responsible for monitoring the corruption of the world, to seek out the truth and to let no false information reach the masses of American to be a wrongly informed public. Journalists write for the sake of the people, in order for them to make an informed decision on the governments elected officials and public figures in proximity. They take down corrupt businesses, they battle Wall Street and they even take down President’s. The Water Gate Scandal with former impeached President, Richard Nixon was found out by several writers for the Washington Post. This went down as one of the most heroic journalistic sanctions to date. Journalists work for the good of the people and at the root of all evil is money. Getting at the root of the problem with all the fake news today is money. John Oliver in his weekly talk show advocates for the necessity of payed news again. Without journalists being payed what they deserve, Facebook, Twitter and several hundred other sites and outlets will continue to produce half assed “journalism” that the people cannot rely on. Subscriptions, money walls, daily clicks, once the news cycle went free and online, is when the initial decline of print newspapers for one declined, and two: objective, real journalism. The only way to restore the faith in journalists and future journalism is to pay for news again (Last Week Tonight). The hardest part to sustain the vast new platforms of news is whether or not people with pay for it, because most of this information is consumed for free, which makes funding a large-scale news entity’s rather difficult. The comeback is being seen in the recognition of bringing journalism to what people are drawn to most these days, social media. 

Consider Snapchat, a rising, most used social media app not only for snapping pics but also for a way for students and targeted younger generations to receive their daily news. The ingenious behind the fun snippets of news from magazines like Cosmopolitan to the Washington Post to National Geographic is that they are setting up for the future work force who are earning salaries. They are priming the youth into wanting these news stories every day so that when they are of age and capable for buying subscriptions, their money will be spent on sustainable subscriptions depending on the taste of the informed buyer. Today one in six Americans are getting their news from social media according to a study done by Pew Research just last year (Mitchell). That is a tremendous number and will only continue to rise with the progression of integration of social media and journalism. Other emerging aspects of social media is through sites such as buzzfeed, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, VSCO and the list goes on and on. The way that all these platforms survive on is ads and ad revenue. Google and Facebook alone make up for 75% of online news (Pew Research). Not only does this news circulate online but through the use of mobile apps. People left right and center without a doubt have the apps for all their favorite sports teams, news stations and social media trends right on their phones. Notifications are put into play so anytime that the Blackhawks draft a new player to their team or Ben Affleck decides to work things out with Jennifer, the minute it hits a news site, the word is out and flashing up on your phone at the blink of an eye. This is the timeliness that news today runs on and is a fast pace, two steps ahead of everyone else kind of industry.

Although newspaper may seem obsolete in this day and age, they are still enjoyed by every age, but most specifically the older generation. Just like vinyl’s newspapers will forever be the concrete foundation in the making of journalism. To get the The New York Times delivered seven days a week for a year it is upwards of a thousand dollars, and for every Sunday delivery, $514 depending on your location (NYT). Some might be thinking how un reigned, for the most part, free accessible online news will survive? The answer is in the economics of new models for journalism. Newspapers generate money from subscriptions, ads and classified ads. The four models include podcasts, paywalls, newsletters and nonprofit funding (Craft & Davis 147). Newsletters are making a tremendous come back. In the mornings, the first thing the average person does is check the news. One may have on ESPN, sitting down to have breakfast and also simultaneously is checking their email for the day, when there it is, all at once there is every shred of important news for the day at hands reach. TheSkimm for example is a compilation of the highest quality political news of the day that is sent out every morning to one’s personal email. It gives brief snippets of each major headline of the day and has links to the full story if intrigued. Brian Stetler as well, host of CNN’s Reliable Sources, does a nightly broadcast of the day or weeks top stories. In addition to his on-screen news, he compiles a daily newsletter that is sent out every night of the week for those who have subscribed portraying what a viewer might have missed. A genius idea really and the key to this wide spread success is the depth in which these stations and people are accessible on every platform. Not everyone has time to sit down for the six, nine or eleven o’clock news, but if one is on the train ride home from work and wants to know, it is as easy as opening your email on one’s electronic device. Newsletters is just one facet of the new world of journalism giving popularity to digital journalism. 

There is an undeniable decline of print journalism in the United States and around the world that has been happening for a decade and most sharply in the past two years. Subsequently, as Indeed so kindly points out, there is definitive decrease in undergraduates who are choosing to major in journalism and graduating with journalism degrees. According to a 2016 research compiled by the website, the number one field journalists are going to is marketing and leaving writers and editors in print journalism at number 7 on the list of 10 (Indeed). Although the post fails to mention that the decline in print journalism has led to a steady increase in other branches of journalism such as online digital sources. ESPN has a completely online presence now and more and more news sites are becoming internet native news stations. The Huffington Post is the first news station to be exist solely online. News, reporting, all aspects of the organization run online (Huffington Post). It was created as early as May of 2005, a real eye opener and start of the acknowledgment for journalism to move online. Podcasts, foreign correspondents, and so many other new platforms are surfacing when just the single print newspaper is declining. The narrow-minded look at the face of newspapers and journalists solely existing on the basis of one business is changing whether the article decides to acknowledge it or not.

There is no doubt that digitalized news and journalism is here to stay, but to understand what is happening one has to consider where this all stemmed from. It was newspapers from the very start, the printing press, the penny paper, mail by horses and paper boys, newspapers were the way of life. Then radio was introduced in the 20’s and people thought it would be a revolution of change, but still newspapers stayed dominant. The 1980’s brought along cable television and again people thought the news cycle would implode and expand, which it did, but stayed centralized with newspapers. In talking to Dr. Romney, a professor of journalism here at the University of South Carolina, he exclaimed that the presence that alone took the model of journalism and shook it as if it were a snow globe, was the Internet (Romney). The emergence of the internet turned everything upside down and immediately the decline of columns, newspaper industries and journalists saw cut backs. Along with this came local journalism and the creation of the media bubble (Friedman-Rudovsky). Media hot spots through website and television broadcast came centralized in the top three most media influenced cities in the world: New York City, Wall street in D.C. and Los Angelos, California. If one were to look up the creation and headquarters of each major app or industry of today’s social media, these are the cities that would be seen. The unforeseen drawback of coverage in the rest of the country everywhere in-between the East and West coast, is the opportunity for untold stories in thriving states that just do not have representatives or resources from large “bubble” industries to be covered. That is where the untapped market is and copious numbers of journalists are flocking to and making a living, online. There will always be a high demand for quality journalists just as the medical world will always have a place for nurses in the workforce, journalism is essential in keeping America’s (democracy) alive.

In summation, the emergence of new digital media, through new platforms and outlets, the most impactive, social media, there is demand for real objective journalism and sustaining the untested news of today. Critics are quick to say that journalism is no means what is what it used to be but what can one really base what is wrong and what is right about how journalism can be consumed. Today it is all about the consumer and the fashion in which journalism can be received in a timely matter with the busy day to day of the working American. While the distribution model of journalism changes fundamentally, the process changes only slightly and its values do not change at all. The stake holders in the sanctity of keeping journalism alive with the new Internet based machine, are the media themselves, the government and most importantly the citizens and masses of America. An intellectual citizen is an informed citizen about the need to know extremities that make this country a democracy. Newspapers that are gone, simply have been rebirthed to fit the new digital technology of the century.
