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New media. In the 1990s, when the internet began to emerge as an integral part of the
media industry, many at traditional media outlets voiced concerns about whether they
could compete. At newspapers in particular, journalists feared that high-quality
investigative reporting would suffer along with the traditional print media. A 2006 study
by JupiterResearch found that Europeans consistently spend more time online than they do
reading newspapers.75 In the same year, a Pew Research Center study found that “four-in-
ten Americans reported reading a newspaper ‘yesterday’ in the survey, down from 50
percent a decade ago.”76 In the six-month period between March and September 2006,
the circulation for six of the 10 most successful papers in the United States declined, with
five of them declining by 1.8 percent or more.
It should be stressed that an obituary for the newspaper industry would be premature.
Even in 2005—reportedly a bad year for the print media—the top 13 publicly traded
newspaper companies reported average profits of 20 percent, while the profit margin of
ExxonMobil, the highest ranked Fortune 500 company, was only 11 percent.77 Many of
the largest and most respected national (and local) papers in the United States have
adapted well to the advent of the internet, assimilating and capitalizing on the new
technology instead of merely competing with it. In fact, online editions of newspapers
dominated the 2006 Online News Association awards for quality in journalism.78
However, there can be no doubt that the traditional print media confront a serious
challenge from the internet. Even with their online success, average profits are declining
among most newspaper companies, and the number of print subscriptions continues to
decrease annually. This decline is particularly worrisome because subscription fees and
advertising revenues for print editions remain the primary sources of profit for most
newspapers—the majority still receive no more than 5 or 6 percent of their overall
advertising revenue from their websites.79
To compensate, many newspapers are closing foreign bureaus and replacing them with
local stringers or freelancers. By 2007, all of the largest newspapers, including the New
York Times and the Wall Street Journal, had even closed their bureaus in Canada.80 This
trend costs newspapers precious expertise on international news, threatening the quality
of investigative reporting that the American audience has come to expect from the
newspaper industry.
One of the most significant challenges faced by the newspaper industry comes from blogs,
which provide critical commentary about the media and are also proving to be important
sources of information in their own right. Nonetheless, Washington Post editor Len Downie
has observed that bloggers are sometimes assets to the newspaper industry, because they
reference and draw attention to newspaper articles.81 They are also a boon to media
diversity, especially in light of the ownership consolidation affecting traditional media.
Blogs offer a platform to anyone interested and dedicated enough to create one. They
offer new benefits to readers as well; while the traditional media are consumed more or
less passively, blogs allow easy communication and debate between readers and authors.
Political and policy blogs are often highly partisan, and while their proliferation adds to
media diversity, it can also contribute to ideological polarization. The Project for Excellence
in Journalism found that only 5 percent of blog postings contained “what would be
considered journalistic reporting,” which involved original research and provided the
reader with more substance than commentary.82 Despite this, or perhaps because of it,
the “blogosphere” has already shaped political history in important ways. In 2004, blogs
helped presidential candidate Howard Dean rise from obscurity to—for a time—a leading

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