Research Paper - third draft is up; could you come and look over it again?

Hey, I was wondering if you guys could critique my draft for a paper and give me some ideas. Just ignore the citations, that's for the final draft.

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Newspapers: Can they survive the digital age?

Introduction
Hundreds of years ago, in late fifteenth century Germany, something new was being invented: the newspaper. The newspaper as we know it was not completed until the early twentieth century, but the industry would continue for hundreds of years (Website 11). However, today the newspaper industry is in steep decline, and nobody knows what will to happen next. It is the contention of this essay that even with immediate action, such as online fees, newspapers cannot survive the digital age in print form, and neither can any other form of media.
It would be a disaster to lose the newspaper because, as Thomas Jefferson said in 1787, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter” (Website 11). Without newspapers or another reliable news source, the world as we know it would disappear off the face of the Earth. Without newspapers, the world would be a completely different place.

Background Information
The very first newspapers in any form were handwritten pamphlets, passed around between the merchants of Renaissance Europe. The first printed newspapers appeared in Germany in the late 1400s with the invention of the printing press. In England, they had corantos, which were pamphlets produced to get word out of any important events. The first regularly printed news in England was in the form of a “news booklet” called The Weekly News, started in 1622. The first true English newspaper was The London Gazette, first published in 1666. By the beginning of the eighteenth century there were many independent papers all around the country (Website 11).
The first newspaper published in America was Boston’s Publik Occurrences, in 1690. It was unauthorized and the publisher was arrested. The first successful American paper was the Boston News Letter, begun by postmaster John Campbell in 1704. By the time the Revolutionary War started, there were 24 papers in print throughout the colonies, and by 1783 there were 43 in the young United States (Website 11). In 1790 the Bill of Rights stated, “Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”
Up until the 1830s, newspapers were so expensive that only the rich could afford to buy them, because a full year’s subscription was approximately equal to a laborer’s salary for a week’s work and had to be paid in advance. But then the “Penny Press” was invented, lowering the price of newspapers to 1¢ a copy and making it possible for everyone to afford them. The 1850 census listed 2526 individual newspapers around the country. In the same decade, new, powerful printing presses were invented that were able to print ten thousand full newspapers in an hour, and some papers even began to add illustrations. Newspapers were big during the Civil War, as people wanted to know exactly what was going on and the outcome of every battle. Reporters were called “specials” and were like superheroes. By 1880 there were 11,314 newspapers in the US. By the 1890s some papers had circulation levels of over a million copies per issue and started adding things such as the sports pages and “funny pages.” By the 1910s, the newspaper as we know it today was complete (Website 11).
In recent years, since about 1987 (Website 10), there has been a severe drop in the newspaper industry. It lost $7.5 billion in ad revenues in 2008 alone and for several years the total journalism budget has dropped by $1.6 billion a year (Website 9). This totals to about $11.6 billion, almost a quarter of the money, lost from the industry from 2005-2008. Total circulation levels for the entire industry are down about 13% (7.4 million) from 1999-2008 (Website 2). Over a hundred newspapers have been shut down completely and over ten thousand jobs have been lost. Ad revenues from print issues dropped almost a third in the first quarter of 2009 alone, and twenty-three of the top twenty-five newspapers in the country have seen their circulation drop seven to twenty percent (Website 9).
US circulation is at its lowest level in 70 years. In the April through September 2009 period, the newspaper industry lost 10.6% of its paying readers from 2008. The ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations) estimates that there are about thirty million paying customers in the US on weekdays, and about forty million on Sundays. In contrast, the NAA (Newspaper Association of America) recorded that approximately 41.1 million people bought the daily newspaper in 1940. In September 2009, the New York Times had the most popular newspaper website with an average of 21.5 million unique visitors per month, which was up 7% from 2008. However, in October 2009, Times Co. announced a 27% decline in ad revenue. The Washington Post lost $143 million in the first half of 2009, with their number of unique online visitors down 29% to about 9.2 million from September 2008, which was just before the presidential election. According to Alan D. Mutter in his blog, “Reflections of a Newsosaur”, using data from all 1400 daily US newspapers, only 13% of the population (around 39 million people) buy a daily paper. In 1940, the number was 31% (Website 10).
At the moment, mostly only small papers are gaining circulation. Of the top ten gainers, only two (The Wall Street Journal and The Las Vegas Review-Journal) have circulation levels above a hundred thousand. The York Daily Record of Pennsylvania grew nearly 17% from 2008 to 2009, increasing its circulation to over fifty-five thousand (Website 10).
In comparison, in the April through September 2009 period, USA Today lost 17% of its circulation, dropping to about 1.9 million per day and losing its spot as the biggest newspaper in the United States to The Wall Street Journal which, though it gained less than 1%, has a circulation level of about two million copies per day. The New York Times lost 7%, the circulation of the Los Angeles Times fell 11%, the San Francisco Chronicle dropped nearly 26%, and the Dallas Morning News and Newark Star-Ledger are each missing about 22% of their circulation. In 2009 the Washington Post had a circulation of nearly 583,000 on weekdays and over 822,000 on Sundays, which is a 5% drop from 2008 (Website 10).
So the question is, why is the newspaper industry in such a steep decline? There are several reasons, but the main one is that most newspapers offer every article or almost every article online for free. Since it’s cheaper, easier, and more environmental to just read it online, a large percentage of people get their news from their computers. This means that newspapers are losing money, because no one is paying them for the articles, even though they still have to pay their staff the same amount. As Scott Rosenberg wrote in his book, Say Everything, “Newspapers make money by bundling a variety of... forms of information together... and then selling that bundle to subscribers and advertisers. The Web dissolved the threads that held this bundle together” (Rosenberg 286). The obvious solution would be for newspapers to start charging for their papers online. For example, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is currently selling more weekday copies than they were a decade ago, which is unusual for a large newspaper. Their executives believe that this is because readers only get free online access if they subscribe to the print edition. Steven Brill, co-CEO of Journalism Online, said, “Online fees will give people one less reason to stop subscribing to the newspaper. Fewer people will be saying, ‘Why am I buying this thing when I can get it free online?’” (Website 2)
There are problems, though; for example, bloggers. Because a lot of blogs are the writer’s view on the news, they often summarize what they will be talking about. People could simply check a blog for the news, rather than pay the newspaper for it. Sites like Yahoo, MSN, and AOL will probably remain free, so readers on a budget or who just don’t want to pay for their news could go to any of those sites as well. Also, a study by the NAA says that because there will be less people, advertisers will not be willing to pay as much to get ads up on the site, and the money from fees might not be enough to cover the losses. In the words of Chris Tolles, chief executive of Topix, “If you do the math, there isn’t going to be enough money to support newspapers no matter what they do.” Topix is a website that displays parts of articles from various free papers (Website 2).
Despite all this, several newspapers have already started to demand fees for their articles. For example, the Wall Street Journal Interactive has been charging for years (Website 1), and has over a million subscribers, bringing in more than $100 million a year (Website 2). The New York Times has been switching back and forth, starting a payment program and then shutting it down when it didn’t bring in enough money (Website 2). They’re planning to start another in January 2011, saying that there will be a flat rate and that print subscribers, even if it’s only for the Sunday paper, will be able to access online for free (Website 3). There’s also Journalism Online, a website that sells monthly subscriptions of multiple newspapers. The Post Register of Idaho has a circulation of about twenty-three thousand. Of those, only about 6200 people are also signed up for the online editions, even though it’s free for print subscribers, and they have only 625 exclusively-online users. The online subscription is six dollars per month, half the price of the print edition. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette only has 3400 people signed up for the $4.95/month online subscription, but print sales are good.
It is also possible that the new Apple Tablet will help save the newspaper industry. After all, it provides a new way to charge for newspapers, and because of the ten inch screen papers can publish digital editions with full sized, color pictures, unlike with other places to read them on-screen, like the iPhone and Amazon’s Kindle. Also, people are more likely to pay for things online if they are on a mobile device, even if the Tablet is not as portable as the iPhone. The Apple App Store is estimated to make $1.4 billion this year, and it could be the money that newspapers need to keep going. An Apple representative at the New York Times said, “Steve [Jobs] believes in old media companies and wants them to do well. He believes democracy is hinged on a free press and that depends on there being a professional press” (Website 4).
On the other hand, the Tablet will practically force the newspapers to charge fees for online access; otherwise people could just use the Tablet’s wireless internet connection to find all the articles online and not even bother to buy them from the App Store. Also, Steve Jobs coerces music labels to use Apple’s pricing, and could do the same for newspapers and magazines. As well, a lot of media depends on a direct line to customers, using things such as automatic renewal for subscriptions, showing sales statistics to potential advertisers, etc. Through iTunes, however, they would receive no information on the customers and might not have the option to create automatic renewal systems (Website 4).
Despite this, publishers seem to be getting ready to put their newspapers on the Tablet. Thomas J. Wallace, the editorial director of Condé Nast, says that 2010 will be “the year of the tablet.” Several publishers have already begun to develop replicas of their papers for the Tablet (Website 4).
Some publishers are already selling their media digitally. For example, the Wall Street Journal began charging for certain parts of their iPhone application in October 2009. Digital magazines are selling well, the December issue of GQ having been bought seven thousand times on the iPhone, and the January issue selling twice as many. The Financial Times gives away their app for free, but bills customers for repeated use (Website 4).
Another way newspapers are going digital is with the upcoming website, Next Issue Media. In late 2009, a group of major publishers announced that they were going to band together to create a website to sell digital issues of their papers, getting direct customer information on the way. These publishers include Time, Condé Nast, Meredith, the News Corporation, and Hearst (Website 4). John Squires, the former executive vice president for Time, will be the temporary managing director. The site will be creating and selling a fixed format for all their media content, and is willing to welcome other publishers (Website 5). This format will work on Apple’s Tablet and whatever comes afterwards (Website .
Next Issue Media may work, but it may not. Peter Kafka from AllThingsD made a list of why it might not make it. First of all, many customers are already signed up for a lot of services, and Next Issue Media have to make them want to sign up for yet another. Also, Amazon and Apple both have systems that give them total control over content. Plus, it can’t just be just a digital version of the regular magazine, because readers can already get that for free online, so why would they pay? (Website 6) The website, “nextissuemedia.com”, is already up, although not quite finished, and not selling just yet (Website 12). The URL is registered to CooperKatz & Company (Website 6). According to their website, CooperKatz & Co. is “an independent, full-service marketing/public relations firm with strong strategic, creative and social media credentials” (Website 7).
So, newspapers have several options for survival. So the question is, will they work? And what will happen if they don’t?

Analysis
When newspapers first started, people had no idea just how far they would come in a mere three and a half centuries. They could not have known about the internet or the iPhone. From then to the present, media changed just as much as language itself did. Broadcasting and format, as well as the news itself, evolved with time. Without modern technology such as phones and computers, information traveled much slower. Before the invention of the telegraph, people had to write letters and wait for a messenger to reach the letters' destinations, as well as the time to write a response and the letter to get back to the original sender. This made it important to put a date on all correspondences, because without it the recipient wouldn't know how recent it was. Across the ocean it took even longer. Sea voyages to Europe could take months and there was no guarantee that the letter would even make it. Not only did this make talking to friends and relatives extremely difficult, but it meant that world news traveled very slowly and that unnecessary wars, such as the War of 1812, were more common than if there had been phones at the time. The invention of the telegraph made correspondence easier within a short distance, but it was expensive and limited, and didn't work overseas.
And now, with the internet practically giving away free media, the newspaper industry faces new challenges. Resources are dropping so quickly that if immediate action is not taken we could be left without any official media at all. The government could fail, the economy could drop even farther than it has, and terror would probably reign. Nobody would know what news was true and what was made up. The world would most likely be plunged into chaos.
Needless to say, this would not be good.
However, the internet cannot simply disappear either. Not only would this cause an uproar in a technology-based America, but it is almost certain that illegal internet companies would rule the black market, and it would likely have nearly the same effect as taking away the newspapers altogether. So, what can the world do?
Charging fees for online newspapers may work, for a time, but companies would be willing to pay less for ad space, and many newspapers don't want to take the risk that the gains from fees will not be worth the loss of ad revenues.
Other than building a time machine and simply stopping the invention of the internet, there is not much anyone can do to help newspapers now. Print media is doomed; there is no room for it in the digital age. Companies must adapt or die, just like any animal would out in the wild. It's a dog eat dog world out there, and they have to either be ready... or be eaten.
And what about books? More and more now, people are switching to Amazon Kindles, Barnes and Noble Nooks, and Sony Readers, as well as simply buying an Mp3 of the audio version of the book they want to read off iTunes or another digital store. People don't like to carry around big piles of books, especially when they're going on a long vacation. It may be expensive when you buy the device, but not only is each book cheaper and easier to buy, but it's so much lighter and easier to carry around, and plus, it saves trees, right? Instead of wasting all that paper on big hardcover books that no one likes to have to try to stuff into an already-heavy bag, they can simply buy an electronic book and read it on a little screen that's easy to carry.
But what about real books? Electronic readers haven't quite caught on yet, but they will soon, and then what will happen to publishers? To bookstores? Will they simply be selling a collection of different styles of electronic readers? Kind of pointless, right?
When someone is reading an electronic book, they don't quite get the full experience. They cannot flip back to the beginning of the book to check a detail that they half-forgot; not easily, at least. There are no page numbers; only long, complicated codes for each individual line. If the reader loses their place, it is extremely difficult to find it again. They can't browse through a bookstore, looking for covers that catch their eye; they have to search through the electronic store, either using a specific search or going through hundreds of pages of book titles and tiny, black-and-white cover art.
What would we be like if we had no electronics? What if the human race had never evolved beyond the horse and carriage? How different would we be? Would we be living as though we were still in the eighteenth century, or would we have developed some other way of life? Perhaps instead of destroying the world and the economy, at this moment we could be enhancing it. Or perhaps we would be destroying it just that much quicker. We'll never know.
And what about a world without newspapers? Would we even have a strong government, if there were no certain way to release news? Probably not. Instead of listening to political debates and arguing over health care, Americans would be sitting in their homes, completely oblivious to the tyranny that would likely rule their lives. And when young men and women were sent overseas to fight wars that they had never even heard of, the American people would have no say. They wouldn't even know that their children were dying until the bodies returned in boxes.
Without newspapers, there would be no development, no government, no secure education system. Millions of people would be homeless, wandering the streets, millions more dead of starvation or exposure or illness or war, while the men and women who are supposed to be ruling the country sit safe and warm in their mansions, waited on hand and foot while everyone else suffers around them. And this is why Americans can't let the newspaper die.

Conclusion
So, the conclusion is clear: Without newspapers, the world would be a horrible place to live. But unless a miracle happens, newspapers cannot be saved. There is no room for them in the digital age, so we’ll have to find a suitable substitute before it is too late. It is the contention of this paper that print newspapers cannot survive the digital age, and that is exactly what has been proven here. Newspapers are the core of democracy, the most reliable source of news out there. Without them, where will we be?

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I didn't italicize, cuz I'm a bit pressed for time. I have half of Tuesday and all of Wednesday off before I have to hand it in, so any last-minute comments and/or suggestions?

Start with changing the first sentence, maybe?
"In late fifteenth century Germany, something new was being invented; the newspaper."

I really think that's it. Are you supposed to separate your introduction from the rest of the paper like that, or is that just for us?

Hmm... Yeah, that would work too.

We're supposed to do that. IDK why.

Well, as far as I can see, there isn't much I can suggest to change. I'll offer a suggestion for your Analysis, though:

Analysis
When newspapers first started, people had no idea just how far they would come in a mere three and a half centuries.

(Possibly): From beginning to the current, it evolved and changed just as much as language itself did. Communications and customs, as well as what was reported, moved with the times.

Or something of the like. Try expanding on how it changed, if you want. Even so, it's pretty good.

Oooh... that's good. Do you mind if I use parts of that but change it a bit so I'm not totally copying? xD

Sure, I don't mind. Best of luck. ^_^

Thanks.

*Huggles* No problem.

I think it's good! I like how it's all going downhill, like "oh they're losing money!", then whoop! Apple brings hope to the newspapers of the world. I also particularly liked this line for its bluntness.

It was unauthorized and the publisher was arrested.

xD I'm not really sure what to suggest about the analysis, though. I likely would've said something like that too, cus I don't write a lot of papers.

Thanks, Shadow.

I just added what I have so far on my analysis. I'll probably need more but it's 1:30 AM and I'm about to pass out. It'll probably just be a garbled mess when I look at it tomorrow morning.

It's not garbled at all! You repeated the first sentence twice, but I think it's great.

Oh, that was just a copy/paste mistake. xD Thanks.

Okay, I put up the third draft. [Didn't italicize, so be warned.] It's due on Thursday.

*raises hand* I thought it was good!

Thankies.