The Transformation of the Newspaper

It’s pretty hard to imagine our daily life without a newspaper and we are witnessing its transformation right before our very eyes. But how much has it really changed?

Things continue to happen every day in our lives that are deemed to be newsworthy and our desire to be informed of these occurrences has never changed. The daily newspaper has been as much of a fixture in our daily lives as a cup of coffee or a glass of orange juice. For generations, the news has been delivered to or doors every morning or afternoon by the neighborhood paperboy and we looked forward to its arrival. You either found it on the doorstep first thing in the morning to join you for your first cup of coffee or it was waiting for you when you got home after a day’s work. Either way, the newspaper was very much an important part of our daily lives.

For centuries, the newspapers in America have remained the same. There were changes to formats and advances in the use of photos and the introduction of color but the newspaper was still exactly that, the newspaper. The first American newspaper came out of Boston in 1690 and was called Publick Occurrences Both Forreign  and Domestick, which was suppressed after the first edition. The Boston News Letter came along in 1704 as the first government approved newspaper and in 1783 and the The Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first daily published newspaper in America. Newspapers remained largely unchanged for the next 200 hundred years until the industry was turned onto its head by the internet, and it’s hard to imagine of an industry more affected by the digital age.

Whatever your favorite newspaper, from the national papers like the New York Times or Washington Post to the local papers like the Charleston Gazette and the Sacramento Bee, they are all available online as well as on your doorstep. The front page, the sports page and the national and local pages have now become bright and in color with video on our computer screen, Ipad or smart phone. Online classifieds have replaced what used to be called the Want-Adds and even the obituaries have become vast online data bases.

Beyond just having our favorite newspaper available online, social media sites such as Twitter have become sources of our daily news and websites such as the Huffington Post dedicate themselves to bringing us online news. What’s more is they are all generally free. Today, 77 percent of all adult Americans look at news stories online by way of links through social media.

Free classified websites have also taken a major bite out of what used to be exclusively in newspapers. Looking for a new or used car was easy just by picking up the newspaper. Now, not only can you find the car of your choice via dedicated car sales websites, you can also apply for and get approved financing to make the purchase and then even get your personalized car insurance at the same time on the very same website.

The editorials, the weather forecast, the pet classifieds, and the box scores are all still available in the newspaper that is waiting for in your doorstep, but the digital revolution is radically changing how you look at the news together with your morning cup of coffee.