Over 1,800 newspapers have closed in the U.S. since 2004 and about 90 local newsrooms closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, poynter.org reported. 

As more communities lose access to local news and newspapers close, the future of print media looks uncertain. Greater Fayetteville Business Journal spoke to two faculty members at UNC Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media on where print may be headed. 

“The answer may not be as binary as we think, and print has just fundamentally changed from how it existed maybe 20, 50 or 100 years ago. You think about it 100 years ago -- print newspapers were an immediate way to get information, and that's not the case now since we’ve had massive technological change,” said Erica Beshears Perel, director for the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media at UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism. 

She mentioned the concept of shelf life has changed. Print papers which were once an immediate way to access information have been replaced with much faster ways. 

“And print may occupy a different space in this question of, ‘Is this something you want to keep around for longer, or is this something that may have a longer shelf life? Do we want to create something that has more staying power versus breaking news?”’ Beshears Perel said. 

Part of the change in print media has been the economic model that made newspapers profitable in the 20th century. 

“For a long time it was a very effective way for advertisers to get a lot of eyeballs. Newspapers used to be a bundled product where you would read it to get the sports scores, get recipes, so many people would turn to newspapers for a lot of different reasons,” Beshears Perel said. “So it was a bundled product and reached a large audience and was a very effective way for businesses to reach their customers.” 

That model has since been broken with the new technology offering other ways for companies to reach business, creating new ways to target specific interests. 

“I would say the print model, the price of newspapers is high today, it costs more to produce now and advertising is supposed to discount the price for the consumer but that’s not happening anymore, because advertising has reduced,” Deb Aikat, professor at UNC Chapel Hill said. “The best way to advertise today is social media, and social media is not an advertising medium, it’s a sharing medium, our world and personalizations have changed.” 

The newspaper industry has had an incredibly difficult time adjusting to the change of this previously very successful economic model to a different reality, in terms of figuring out staffing, and creating a digital revenue model that supports the publication, Beshears Perel said. 

She advises news consumers to really think about the intentionality with which they consume news. 

“I think one of the changes of the last 10 to 15 years has been people consume media less intentionally and passively,” Beshears Perel said. “You’re scrolling through social media and you see a headline that someone has shared, that’s a passive way to consume news versus picking up a newspaper is a very intentional way.” 

“Deep reading is something we don’t do all that anymore,” Aikat added. “I need a wide screen computer versus a cell phone.” 

Originally from India, Aikat moved to the U.S. 30 years ago and says he’s amazed by how many people do not read or don’t subscribe to a newspaper today.

 “It starts in high school where we learn you can get away without reading,” he said. “There’s also so many not reading classics anymore, in high school they are reading the Cliff Notes version of stories.” 

A 2014 study by the American Press Institute showed that at the time about six out of 10 Americans did not read past the headline. 

“I still get print magazines and I enjoy reading them,” Beshears Perel added. “I do find there’s a different readership experience to reading something in print, especially something that’s long and taking that more of an experience. I think it’s done more intentionally.” 

There are plenty of ways to create intentional experiences digitally, but it is helpful to think of news consumption and news diet in ways where we think of things we want to know about everyday, she said.

“I don’t know if we’re there in terms of what audiences are doing but I personally feel like I am a more informed person when I read and finish a handful of articles and newsletters versus scrolling on social media,” Beshears Perel said. “We’ve seen a lot of newspapers close and there’s the Democracy Fund and Pew which has done a lot of research about what happens to communities without local news and how it affects civic engagement.” 

With the current news climate, there is a lot of research happening on the misinformation and the flattening of content on social media platforms which makes it harder for the public to differentiate between reliable and unreliable information. Both, Beshears Perel and Aikat said where print is headed and readership depend on access to the internet in the country. 

“I think the future of newspapers and printing is going to depend on ownership and market size and also reader habits,” Beshears Perel said. “One thing to think about is that not everywhere in America has a great internet, so there’s quite a few communities where a digital edition is not very accessible to a large portion of the population.” 

The future of journalism is meeting audiences where they are and trying to figure out what are the information needs of communities, specifically the ones that enhance democracy, that provide facts, that promote community instead of just life and then providing those in a variety of platforms that serve readers in a platform neutral way, she mentioned.

 A UNC news deserts study from 2018, about 1,300 U.S. communities have completely lost news coverage. 

“Because some people are going to be best served by a print product and some desktop or text messages,” Beshears Perel said. :It’s kind of more about what the audience needs and serving them and less about bending the audience to a particular platform or product.” 

She suggests that it may be possible that a demographic may want more than one kind of platform. 

We have become very hyper local in terms of everything, Aikat added. 

“There is no one answer to where print is going, it’s now a donation based model, strict subscription based model and such,” he said. “As we pass on to a digital society, information is all around but truth be told, the information is very exclusive to certain people, so say with your publication, the Greater Fayetteville Business Journal is very important to a niche of people in your area, so this micro-targeting model is now very important.” 

When asked Beshears Perel if she thought print was dead, she said it was more complicated than that. 

“I think the traditional business model for print journalism is dead, that doesn't mean there won’t be a new one or that there isn’t a future for print in a specialized way,” she said. “While the financial model for journalism is worrisome, I think there are areas that have shown a lot of promise in the last five years. There’s a lot of opportunity and good things happening in the media landscape.”