News Junkie Smackdown

Who's Better Informed, Newspaper Readers or Web Surfers?

By Michael Kinsley
Posted Monday, July 20, 2009, at 5:19 PM ET

What if there were no newspapers anymore? Some people, mainly newspaper reporters and publishers, are warning that this is where we're heading. And they declare, as with a single loud voice, "You'll be sorry!" To save ourselves 50 cents or a buck, they say, we will be denying ourselves crucial knowledge that we need to be well-informed citizens of a democracy.

Even in the good old days when newspapers were hugely profitable, readers weren't paying for what they read in newspapers. That 50 cents or a buck barely paid for the paper and ink, let alone the delivery—and never mind the cost of the content. More customers than ever are eager to read newspapers, and they demonstrate that every day by going to newspaper Web sites. By foregoing paper and ink, the readers are saving newspaper publishers more money than it would cost to produce and deliver the paper the old-fashioned way. Newspapers' financial troubles cannot be blamed on the readers. Nevertheless, publishers—almost as disenchanted with advertisers as the advertisers are disenchanted with newspapers—look to readers for their salvation.