The days of waking up and walking out to your driveway to pick up the daily newspaper are over. 62.3%- this is the percentage of people who do not receive a newspaper to their home in the morning. Do you blame people for cancelling their newspaper subscriptions? According to the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, the average price of an online newspaper subscription is $3.11 compared to The Washington Post which charges $1.50 six days a week and rises to $2 on Sundays. If one wanted to just read the Washington Post online daily it would cost them $9.99 per month saving them over $30 per month. Publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal have all added the ability to read their papers online.

        As technology has become a dominant force in our lives, getting our news from the internet or television has become the social norm.The outsides of coffee shops used to be riddled with people sitting and reading the daily paper. Today if you walk by, you will most likely find people sitting and using their phones, computers, and tablets. Whether or not they are looking at the news is unknown, but it shows how society has changed, and this change has had a huge impact on the way we receive our news. A survey conducted that had 265 random subjects of all ages found that 63% of the people surveyed receive their news via social media. Social media and online news platforms allow people to get all the news they want for free. Not only is this news free, but it also is significantly more convenient and efficient than reading the newspaper.

        Newspapers come out once a day. The advancement of technology has allowed us to get up to the minute news updates from anywhere in the world. Whether it is news from China, Canada, or Timbuktu, you can have all the news you want with just a few clicks. Due to this people tend to check the news more, ultimately leading to a population that is more involved and in the know about what is going around the world. In the survey, participants were asked how often they check the news and 54% of the participants said that they check the news more than once a day; however, once looking at this it did not come as a surprise. Due to people using technology as their main platform to get news, it makes perfect sense that they check the news multiple times a day. Rather than releasing all the news at once, online news platforms release the news as they get it, whether it be early in the morning or late at night and this is what causes people to check the news so often. Each time they check the news they may only read an article or two, but that adds up if they read two articles on 5 or 6 different occasions.

        Hoping to pursue a career in journalism, these were all things that need to be considered before I commit to going down this path. As the field becomes more technology based, it is becoming more of a quick read business. Articles in the papers used to be long and filled with lots of details, but now it has turned into a business where you try and convey your message or news in the fastest, most efficient way possible. This allows the readers to know what is going on as soon as something happens, rather than having to wait until the next morning like people used to have to do.

        Despite all of the changes that have occurred in this field of work, the old traditions and ways haven’t gone completely extinct. 37.7% of people surveyed still receive a newspaper to their home daily. Although these people receive the newspaper only 0.8% of participants actually get most of their news from these papers which means that these papers just end up getting thrown out. News is changing and it is changing for the better. People are able to get their news whenever they want, from wherever they want, and from any news source they want. This allows people to stay up to date with everything that goes on in the world. Social media has played such a prominent role in today’s society; iit was only a matter of time until people began getting their news from social media sites like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. In a survey of just high school students, 93% said that they get their news from social media. Putting the news on apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook has exposed teens to news, which is something that is very difficult to do. High school English classes have been trying to expose students to the news through the New York Times student magazine Upfront and having them do assignments from them. But this forces them to read rather than them choosing to read. The catchy headlines on Snapchat and Instagram are what pull the teens into reading the news.

Though it hasn’t happened yet, the classic newspaper is on it’s way out the door, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People will be getting up to the minute news and as technology advances the opportunities for news to expand are endless.