Raleigh NC | More Publications Going To Online Only… Will The N&O Be Next?

What Do Online Newspapers Mean For The Newspaper Industry, Its Readers And PR Professionals?

Whether it’s because ad sales are crashing or readers want to save subscription fees by reading stories online, newspapers are in a state of panic and are turning to other forms of new media to publish their content.

Owners of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer decided to cut the budget for the 112 year old newspaper’s print editions and instead shift all published content to their online website. The Christian Science Monitor is planning to do the same sometime this April, and just recently, 174 year-old Ann Arbor News replaced its print editions with a “web-focused community news operation.” And The News and Observer? As of now they are still printing papers, but on their Web site, readers can subscribe to an “e-edition” and “view the N&O exactly how it appears in print every day” except online.

But what if the N&O did go completely “paperless” so to speak? If so, is it necessarily a bad thing? What does this mean for the newspaper industry? How will long-time print edition readers adjust to this new form of communication? And for public relations professionals, who depend on the symbiotic relationship between themselves and newspaper reporters, what does the lack of print media mean for public relations?

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