Welcome, all, to a brave new world. This hearing is genuinely geared to examine, to understand what we don't know, to try to figure out, from various people in these fields of expertise of new media and the existing media, of where we're going.
Americans once counted on newspapers to be the rock on which journalism, the best sense of the word "journalism," was based. As Princeton University communications professor Paul Starr notes in the most recent issue of Columbia Journalism Review, "More than any other medium, newspapers have been our eyes on the state, our check on private abuses, our civic alarm systems.
But, today it is fair to say that newspapers look like an endangered species, and many people in the industry and outside of it are so writing. The latest circulation figures released just last week show that the largest metro newspapers are continuing to lose daily and Sunday readers, a long-time trend. I might add, a trend that began before the economic downturn in the country. But, it is a trend that is accelerating to record rates.
So, we're here today to talk, not only about the conditions that have led to these jolting statistics, but about what they mean to us, what they may mean to a country that appears to be reading less or that finds information in snippets rather than whole pieces. We need to understand what it means about news delivery during a time of great creative turmoil and transition within the market for news delivery, and how we might preserve the core societal function that is served by an independent and diverse news media.
