The Atlantic has a good article in its current issue about the state of American journalism. What’s alarming in this article is the speed with which change could come. Coule the New York Times end its print product, and go online only by May? How about a New York Times that operates with only 20 percent of its current reporting power? Believe it or not, it’s not that far from possible, if you believe the Atlantic.
From the article: “Regardless of what happens over the next few months, The Times is destined for significant and traumatic change. At some point soon—sooner than most of us think—the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist. And it will likely have plenty of company. In December, the Fitch Ratings service, which monitors the health of media companies, predicted a widespread newspaper die-off: “Fitch believes more newspapers and news paper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010.—
