Editorial - Blogs cannot replace newspapers

For more than 300 years, the printed news has survived the onslaught of magazines, radio and television.

However, all that changed with the invention of the Internet.

Newspapers are in danger of becoming extinct, thanks mainly to the Internet and its vast majority of free information.

People are looking to save money, and with Web sites such as Craigslist, where they can advertise for free, newspapers are losing their largest source of income.

After five years of falling revenue, along with the fact that younger readers tend to find more of their news online, for free, newspapers are slowly but surely dying.

According to the San Jose Mercury News last month, the Denver-based Rocky Mountain News, which has been printing for 150 years and has won four Pulitzer Prizes since 2000, shut its doors and ended its newspaper circulation.

The company will remain solely online, with less writers and a smaller income. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune both filed for bankruptcy last December.

Two other well known Californian newspapers, the Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Chronicle, are facing financial problems as well.

Almost a week after unionized staffers at the Sacramento Bee agreed to pay cuts in order to limit the number of upcoming layoffs they will face, the same situation befell the San Francisco Chronicle.

In an effort to save the newspaper and their coworker's jobs, union members at the Chronicle passed a proposed contract by a 10 to 1 margin in favor of similar cuts.

As part of the negotiation, employees will receive one less week of paid vacation, their health benefits costs increased, work weeks extended and layoffs can occur, despite seniority.

In return for their cooperation, the number of people losing employment reduced from 225 to 150. But even with the agreed upon cutbacks, there is no guarantee that the Chronicle will be saved.

A disturbing trend that also effects newspapers is the rise of the bloggers and the steady increase in their following. There are multiple problems with blogs.

It is impossible to decipher whether or not a blog is being posted by legitimate writers, who have been educated in journalism, or the average Joe, who does not know how to properly write a concise, well-thought out article. Without proper editors, blogs allow themselves to be polluted by unimpressive stories and writing.

Many bloggers also have the tendency of ignoring facts to support their own agendas, effectively eliminating unbiased journalism and creating a plethora of questions regarding ethics.

If this trend of growing bloggers continues, newspapers may become glorified blogs themselves.

Trying to stay informed in a newspaperless world would be an arduous, time consuming task, of scanning through countless blogs to find unbiased, factual news.

We must make sacrifices now, to preserve the future of our profession.