After 150 years of publishing, and four Pulitzer Prizes, the Rocky Moutain News will publish its last paper tomorrow. Denver will become a one-newspaper-town, much like the rest of the nation, after the Rocky closes its doors. While the news of the Rocky’s demise was sudden, it was not surprising. The current economic free-fall has hammered the newspaper business, an industry that was already in severe trouble. The Rocky lost $16 million last year bringing its debt to $130 million. Nearly all advertising is down, with classified ads–an important revenue stream for newspapers–continuing to feel the negative effect of online alternatives such as Craig’s List. It’s a tough time to be in the newspaper business, and even worse for the 200 or so Rocky Mountain News staff who are now without employment.
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Wow 130 million dollars in debt? Newspapers are an old form of Media, people still anjoy holding a peice of paper or a book in there hands. Its surprising that newspapers are around at all considering most are available online and most paper copies of everything are available on “the kindle”or a tablet of some sort. Everything seems to be going digital and the Rocky Mountain News just wasn’t imporant enought to fight the good fight.
online newspapers are the new way of getting news to the public. This is only possible through the inevtion of the personal computor and the internet. Before those inventions newspaper was the most populuar way for mass media to report on the news. It is extremely unfortunate for the families that will be feeling of the effects of this newspaper going down. But as a society it is growth that i think was inevitable and will continue to grow as time progresses!
Bye, bye Rocky Mountain News. I never was a big fan of their newspapers but it still saddens me to hear that they have fell under the current weight of the economy. Now that they are gone Denver has became a one paper town, which means the information we obtain from the daily papers are strictly bias and we won’t have another major paper to compete and publish one. The decline of the news paper is a scare for me because my major is in fact journalism and I fear that I won’t be able to solidify a job in the future. I wonder why the government didn’t bail them out of the bankrupt slum like they did GMC and Chrysler. The world is slowly drifting from the morning breakfast with a nice paper to read to a more fast pace digital form of news that has dominated.
This is a great example of the change in media today. Consumers are now becoming less independent on newspaper print and are relying on electronic media like the news on television or on the internet. It is a combination of a loss of interest in the articles and the changing of today’s society. Many newspapers are struggling to stay up and running and I predict that soon all newspapers will become a thing of the past.