by Steve Tarter

Created on: November 12, 2008

I didn't expect to get whirled into the vortex of journalistic change when I joined the Peoria Journal Star 10 years ago. Newspapers have always been there. They've been been part of our culture: "Extra, extra, read all about it" and that kid pitching the newspaper off the porch from his bike. How many movies used that spinning headline to scream info to the viewer?

But now newspapers seem to be fighting for their lives. All the news that's fit to print doesn't seem to fit anymore. It's that print part. We're getting news from other sources. The Internet throws up a world of papers that not only reach your porch but come free of charge. Cable TV news channels, meanwhile, prattle on endlessly about the issues of the day while offering 24-7 coverage of the latest catastrophe.

That's tough competition in a world where a lot of people aren't exactly reading fanatics. Oh, they're reading but it's "your precious e-mails," as the freaky innkeeper on the Verizon commercial says, or text messages or bits and pieces along the way on a computer screen.

Newspapers suddenly find themselves in the same boat as AM radio: old technology that's sinking as younger consumers find other options. So the question becomes: Do you start bailing or try to build another boat?

By the looks of things, the newspaper industry is doing both-on the fly. One of the ironies involved in this struggle is as the Internet opens up this universe of possibilities: Video, additional pictures, sidebar stories, reader responses, links to related Web sites, etc., there are fewer people in the newsroom to do it.

Maybe you heard: newspapers are cutting back-on the size of the publication, on pages, on news content and, of course, on staff. A whole new business model is forming, one that doesn't involve foreign correspondents or veteran newshawks.

Now we need to make a differentiation here between big-city and small-town papers because while the metro scene is suffering, the smaller publications serving rural America continue to thrive. That's an important distinction because it points out that newspapers that can be clipped, written on and otherwise manhandled before being recycled still have a place in our world.

The question is just what the newspaper's place? In the case of a paper like the Chicago Tribune, one of the many big-city dailies struggling with debt, that paper's place is no longer on the porch of a reader in Peoria 160 miles from the Windy City. The paper recently discontinued downstate home delivery

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