THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON NEWSPAPERS

Much has been written and said about the impact of the rise of the internet on the newspaper industry. Rupert Murdoch recently came out and said some people are over-reacting in their cries of doom - that there will always be a place for good journalism and that readers will always trust newspapers more than the net. Johann Hari is a columnist for the Independent in London. The NZ Herald runs some of his work, and it is always impressive. This past week there was an excellent Hari piece about the most over-rated and under-rated things of 2008. Here's what he wrote for "Most Under-rated Phenomenon:"

"Newspapers. Here's a weird paradox. If you include the internet, more people are reading quality newspapers than ever before. Yet newspapers are - as the bankruptcy of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune shows - dying. We don't just want it all, we want it free. Does it matter? As good as some bloggers are, they don't have the army of foreign correspondents or in-depth investigative teams that are necessary to make sense of the world. If print newspapers - for all their manifest flaws and corporate biases - die, there will be an aching hole where news-gathering used to be. Newspapers: buy them or lose them."