Change and the NewspaperFor the last three hundred years, newspapers have played an import

Change and the Newspaper

For the last three hundred years, newspapers have played an important role in the social, political, and economic life of the United States. As recently as the middle of the 1980s, there were about 1,800 daily newspapers in the country, but in the following ten years the number dropped to about 1,500. In 1950, each household read about 1.3 newspapers every day. (That means, of course, that some households read more than one newspaper and many read no newspaper.) By 1985, that number had dropped almost by half, and the average number of newspapers read per household was 0.7. In 1970, 80 percent of all adult Americans read a newspaper every day. By 1999 that number had decreased to 40 percent. These numbers suggest that newspapers are disappearing, but that may not be the case.

It is true that American newspapers are changing. Many papers in the United States are local papers; they are published in smaller towns and cities and are read only in the area where they are published. They carry local news, very little national or international news, and a lot of advertising. Many years ago, when transportation and communication were more difficult, people got more of their news from local newspapers.

One of the biggest changes affecting newspapers is, of course, television. Television brings information to homes much more quickly than newspapers do, and, more importantly, it does so with pictures and sound. Television can report national and international stories to a large number of people in a short time, and do it cheaply. Interestingly, Americans have greater trust in television news than they do in newspapers. Whereas a majority of people were more willing to believe newspapers than television in the 1950s, by 1990 more than twice as many people trusted television news more.

A second change is the role of larger newspapers. Until 1980, the United States did not really have a national newspaper.There were papers such as the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal, but the first had a very small circulation and the second was published for a special readership of people interested in business news. The New York Times was also popular, but it was mostly a large-city newspaper that was read by people outside of New York City.

In 1982, however, a new national newspaper appeared, USA Today. It was different from most other newspapers in that it had many short stories about national and international news, sports, and business, many bright and colorful pictures, national weather maps, and short news stories from every state. At first, USA Today was not very popular. Traveling businessmen read it, but few private homes had it delivered. The newspaper is much more popular today, however, and it now sells about 2 million copies every day, about the same as the Wall Street Journal. A change that has helped both of these papers become more popular is the ability to send the information to be printed to many locations throughout the United States by satellite. The papers are then printed and distributed quickly in many different places, making them as up-to-date as local newspapers. Many people who read newspapers are therefore reading national rather than local papers.

A third change that is affecting newspapers is the one mentioned above: changes in technology that allow news and information to be communicated quickly and conveniently. Cable and satellite television make international, national, and even local news, weather, sports, and financial information available to most households all day and whenever the residents want to watch it. With fifty to one hundred channels available in many locations, television watchers have many types of information available that they did not have in the early part of this century. Some people even think that too much information is available now.

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