Another Tough Day for the Newspaper Industry

May 4, 2009 | Posted by: Alisa Valudes

The newspaper industry is fighting for its life, literally. And more bad news today added fuel to the fire. The Boston Globe may be the latest casualty of the changing media landscape - on the brink of closing its doors. The Boston Globe is anticipated to follow the path of other daily papers over the past year - the shuttering of Chicago Sun-Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, to name a few, while others are in bankruptcy protection -- The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer.

What's more, today the news was buzzing with a question posed by CNN to the White House about whether there would be a federal bailout of the newspaper industry much like the banking and auto industries.

A world without newspapers is hard to imagine. Will the intention of "freedom of the press" go by the wayside or is a new world of "freedom of the press" emerging - moving aside newspapers and journalistic reporting to make room for a world of citizen journalism and new media? And an article in today's New York Times explores this on a deeper level in terms of the powerful role of newspaper reporting in keeping corporate American and government institutions honest and accountable. It's an interesting point to consider. If newspapers die, who will hold our government officials or corporate executives accountable? In this delicate world of checks and balances, it would be a void hard to fill.