Should we be concerned about the “death of newspapers”

I read the even articles #2 and #4.

With the new age of technology newspapers are starting to die out.  People nowadays have the information on their finger tips with easy access to political articles online through their laptops, or even in their pockets through their cellphone.  Professional journalists are being taken over by politically participating bloggers who are just ordinary folks.  This new world has led us to the question of the millisecond, “Should we be concerned about the ‘death of the newspapers’?”  My answer is YES.

Political bloggers and analysts rely on professional articles to base their discussion on.  If we eliminated the professional unbiased articles our news wouldn’t consist of hard facts.  It would just be a bunch of people’s opinions, which wouldn’t be very reliable.

Taken from source #2

If field reporting dies out, the world will become a less known place. Vast areas will simply not be covered, and those that are will not be covered from multiple perspectives. Precisely because reporters are imperfect, because they by necessity capture only a fragment of reality, it is essential that numerous firsthand accounts exist. If Reuters, the Times and all the other newspapers with foreign bureaus have died and only the AP reporter is telling us what happened in China, readers will be forced to accept his or her version without being able to compare it. And that faint gleam of empirical evidence will be lost amid the infinite amount of commentary that will instantly dominate the Internet.

The consequences of the “death of newspapers” would be harmful to our society.  Without the firsthand reporting, we would fall into an ignorant pit of doom with many people not knowing what is really going on.  This is what source #2 has to say.

The civic consequences would be just as calamitous. With little empirical evidence about the world, the country would divide further into solipsistic, isolated communities. There would be no agreement on even the most rudimentary facts: We would look back nostalgically at those days when “only” half of Americans were so ill-informed, and susceptible to government propaganda, that they believed that Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11. Rancorous division into exclusive camps would become even more pronounced than it is now, making political compromises even less likely. In this ignorant yet loudly opinionated future, our shared civic culture would degenerate, and demagogic leaders would flourish.

I believe in the statement, “The Internet gives readers what they want, newspapers give them what they need.” very strongly.  If you are a sports junky, you would go online and read a lot of sports articles.  This is informing you on what you want, but its not informing you on other important issues such as what political candidates stand for, or what is going on to help with the earthquake in Haiti.  You are getting what you want, but not what you need.  You are still an ill-informed ignorant citizen.  With newspapers on the other hand, you see various types of stories (including sports) which allows you to be well informed in all the areas that you should be to be a good citizen.  This next quote is also taken from #2.

It’s much easier to consume unfamiliar information in a newspaper than on the Internet. Because of the physical layout of a newspaper, you’re much more likely to read a story you aren’t interested in than you would if you were online. Even if the same reported stories were available online, they would not be as widely read. Online media is tailored to respond to the individual’s conscious desires; it is less capable of stimulating latent ones.

I believe that yes, the new-age of digital news is good for obtaining knowledge faster, but it lacks in first-hand reporting and keeping the public informed on all the issues of our society.