Do You Still Read Newspapers?

Or, are you totally electronic media-dependent to get your news?  Word today that the Rocky Mountain News will fold Friday, two weeks shy of its 150th anniversary, is sending shock waves through the newspaper industry.  And more papers are in trouble.

Today’s announcement (left) comes as metropolitan newspapers and major newspaper companies find themselves reeling, with plummeting advertising revenues and dramatically diminished share prices. Just this week, Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, announced that unless it was able to make immediate and steep expense cuts it would put the paper up for sale and possibly close it. Two other papers in JOAs, one in Seattle and the other in Tucson, are facing closure in coming weeks.

The New York Times has already put its New York headquarters and the Boston Red Sox on the block in an effort to reduce debt.   How long before even more of these institutions either close their doors or sell off assets, making them shadows of the empires they once were?  And if they remain as online-only publications are we going to have to pay to read them?

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.