Things have been busy the past few days for me, and on top of that, I’ve been digitizing and editing together some newspaper designs I did for The Ithacan way back when. The best ones can now be found in my portfolio. Take a look:
Video packages are soon to follow.
Eric Alterman has a great article in The New Yorker about the history of and the eventual end of days for the American newspaper. The industry has been waiting for expecting such a collapse for decades now but with the continual decline in readership, the expensive costs involved in printing a paper, and people turning to the internet for most of their classified needs (Craigslist), the end might be coming quicker then we think. No, I don’t see print suddenly falling off the map, but as far as I can see there are going to be a hell of a lot fewer daily newspapers out there (especially in small communities) and probably around the turn of the decade most of those in the newspaper business will start to turn exclusively digital.
Where are things moving to? Your web browser? Your iPhone? Your TV? RSS Feeds? Where ever things headed in the future your news will probably stop showing up at your front doorstep very soon.
Most managers in the industry have reacted to the collapse of their business model with a spiral of budget cuts, bureau closings, buyouts, layoffs, and reductions in page size and column inches. Since 1990, a quarter of all American newspaper jobs have disappeared. The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death, that the newspaper companies’ solution to their problem was to make “our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.” That may help explain why the dwindling number of Americans who buy and read a daily paper are spending less time with it; the average is down to less than fifteen hours a month. Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising.
Philip Meyer, in his book “The Vanishing Newspaper” (2004), predicts that the final copy of the final newspaper will appear on somebody’s doorstep one day in 2043. It may be unkind to point out that all these parlous trends coincide with the opening, this spring, of the $450-million Newseum, in Washington, D.C., but, more and more, what Bill Keller calls “that lovable old-fashioned bundle of ink and cellulose” is starting to feel like an artifact ready for display under glass.
The lack of news recently has been due to two things. One is the exorbitant amount of homework I’ve had recently, not to mention I’m working on a documentary at the moment, and secondly, I’ve been putting work into the less loved parts of this great website (namely my Portfolio section for the moment). Updates will resume as scheduled once I get a few more things out of the way.
In the mean time check out some of this work I did:
More to follow. Keep your eyes peeled.
