With fake news everywhere today, it can be a relief to pick up a newspaper and see factual information from a credible organization is accountable for its reliability.
Newspaper sales are declining in comparison to sales rates in the past, but this should not be the case. Newspapers are a very important part of American history, but why should they merely be part of the past and not a part of today?
In today’s world, people tend to get a lot of misinformation. Picking up a reputable newspaper or reading its online counterpart can be a solution to this dilema. Going to newspapers for factual information from professional journalists, rather than just glimpsing at a dramatic headline from a clickbait article posted on Twitter is so important to find out the truth.
However, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), employment at newspapers has fallen by nearly 60 percent since 1990. Employment peaked in June of 1990 at 457,000 workers. Since then, the number of workers has continuously been on a steady decline. In March 2016, the BLS recorded only 183,000 people working for printed newspapers.Meanwhile, online publishing has continued to increase since then.
Through the 1990s, there were about 30,000 workers and by the time 2000 came around that number grew to a striking 112,000 workers.
In today’s society there are so many outlets claiming to provide news, but with a tenuous grasp on any real facts. In a world with phone notifications from twitter, Facebook, Snap chat, Instagram etc., it can seem like phones are going off all day and night.
Some of these sources claim filled with news, but can be filled with clickbait which distract from the truth. Yes, online news sources can be reliable news too, but more often than not professional news sources are more accurate.
Professional newspapers are now an endangered species. The Wall Street Journal reported a total average circulation of 2.3 million. The print edition comprised 1.4 million, or 59% of the total.
Meanwhile New York Times’ total circulation was 2.2 million with print circulation of 680,905, or 32% of the total. Anyone can post things on the internet but not everyone can write a well-sourced newspaper. Since 2008, more than 166 newspapers in the United States have closed down or stopped publishing a print edition, according to Paper Cuts, a website dedicated to tracking the U.S. press industry downturn. More than 39 print titles shut down in 2008, and 109 did so in 2009.
The average salary for a writer or an editor for a newspaper is approximately $64,560 according to journalismdegree.com, though the salary can range significantly depending on location, education level and experience.
Larger cities tend to pay more because there is a lot more competition and the costs of living are higher than if you were to write for a paper in a small city. However, the number of printed papers is in a great decline in comparison to past years, contributing to many jobs losses in the industry.
Furthermore, many people disregard news channels which are perceived to be biased righ or left. Yet networks like C-SPAN, which are basically as unbiased as it gets, are still seen as unattractive option to the general public, just because it is not as flashy as others.
So instead of complaining that all news sources are unreliable based off of an experience with just one, take the time to pick a real news source instead of just believing the second hand version of the truth.
Before buying a newspaper make sure to evaluate the sources that they are using, and that those staments that you are reading really are facts.
If you want news that you know you can trust, you have to be willing to do the research to know that the outlet you are reading from is providing facts and nothing else.