Out of Print

Out of Print; the death and life of the American newspaper
By Eric Alterman March 31, 2008
The New Yorker

My parents still read the newspaper daily, but over in America these people are a dying race. In this article Eric Alterman discusses the dying American news papers. Huffington post is an online news paper, like the kind that is taking over the traditional news papers. They get most of their stories from the reader and allow people to comment on the articles. Even though the site is really popular due to their inter activeness, it happens often enough that untruthful articles appear on their site, due to their Mullet Strategy, which simply means that the professional editors create the front page and the rest is open to the reader. They are often criticized by mainstream media, which has lead to one of most heated debates of the American 20th century. Two main players in this debate are Lippmann and Dewey. The main discussion though is between the mainstream, traditional media and the new web based media; traditional media says that web based media recycles their news, which web based media says they find the flaws in traditional media. The fact though is that newspapers are dying; it is shown in their economic status, their reader status and the overall amount of newspapers, only the big players will survive. Maybe in a few years time, my parents will also be sitting with their laptop at the breakfast table reading the news.