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much room in a newspaper to offer the news the staff feels is of interest to its readership. This is basically a function of the economics of the business. The amount of advertising the newspaper includes has a bearing on their ability to offer the news. The price of paper, supplies and distribution all combine to give the editors a fixed limit of size. With the internet, this is less of an issue allowing for a greater range of topics.

As stated before, there is a fixed amount of information within the confines of a daily edition. If there is an ongoing situation of interest you only have one option with a newspaper, which is to keep the older issues or travel to your local library to access the previous articles. The internet has repositories easily searched with keywords relating to the article subjects.

Another item for consideration is the overall toll newspapers take on the environment. Factories are necessary to produce the ink, as well as the paper the news is printed on. After a patron finishes with the newspaper it is either translated into trash or taken for recycling. Even with the best efforts of those environmentally conscious souls, recycling still has a significant cost. With internet offerings there is no waste.

There is a generation of Americans that will never give up their paper copies of the news. But this generation is also approaching the part of their life when age takes them away from us. Within the next three decades this group of folks will be a memory just as I expect the newspaper to be. While it will be odd, there just are not enough reasons to prevent the demise. I guess we will miss newspapers, but the benefits will be enough to satisfy our needs.

Learn more about this author, Joe Owens.
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