The EV Tribune shuts down. Is anyone surprised?

If you haven’t heard yet, the East Valley Tribune newspaper is shutting down at the end of the year. Is anyone surprised by this? Sure, we can debate the quality of the Tribune versus the Arizona Republic, but newspapers as they have existed are an endangered species. The Republic is still around only because it’s bigger.

For better or worse, the news landscape has changed and traditional newspapers are on life support, rapidly headed for death. Within 10 years, no newspapers will continue to exist in the form we’ve known them. Many will follow the path of the Tribune and others which have closed their doors. The rest will be smart enough to evolve into the next generation of news outlets. What they’ll look like, I don’t know, but the papers that want to survive had better get busy figuring it out.

UPDATE: Andrew Long has done some good research to find out what’s up with Freedom Communications and the East Valley Tribune. Check out his Twitter feed for links and info: @longcreative

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  • http://www.stacyholmstedt.com/ Stacy

    News, like healthcare, is not able to be sustained on a traditional business model where large corporations buy up all the small companies and have to keep increasing year-over-year profitability to answer to stockholders.

    In a way, I'm glad this is happening. It's like a forest fire cleaning out the deadwood. There will still be newsgathering and reporting. It just won't be owned by a huge conglomerate.

  • http://matthewpetro.wordpress.com Matthew Petro

    Very well said! It does seem very dangerous that large conglomerates now control many news outlets across various types of media. News driven strictly by stockholder happiness doesn't really serve anyone well in the long run.

  • http://www.stacyholmstedt.com/ Stacy

    News, like healthcare, is not able to be sustained on a traditional business model where large corporations buy up all the small companies and have to keep increasing year-over-year profitability to answer to stockholders.

    In a way, I'm glad this is happening. It's like a forest fire cleaning out the deadwood. There will still be newsgathering and reporting. It just won't be owned by a huge conglomerate.

  • http://matthewpetro.wordpress.com Matthew Petro

    Very well said! It does seem very dangerous that large conglomerates now control many news outlets across various types of media. News driven strictly by stockholder happiness doesn't really serve anyone well in the long run.