Chapter 4 - Newspapers

Unlike books, Newspapers were the first medium to rely on advertisement revenues for financial support. Newspapers have also been around since the Ancient Greeks, but in a much simpler form called Acta Diurna, which was a page hung up on a "bulletin board" for the whole town to see. Like books, Newspapers were and still are a way to empower society, it was specifically in the heart of the American Revolution as the protection of the press was included in peoples freedom of speech. Newspapers first targeted the elite but through the penny press started to target a mass audience. Even though nowadays the amount of people who read newspapers have decreased tremendously, it is still a source of advertising. Because of this, joint operating agreements (JOA), falling papers merge with successful ones but keep their administration and reporting departments separate to continue in the business. Due to all the conglomerates, traditional ethnic journalistic values are being broken as journalists cannot write freely and must censor themselves so they do not agitate a big company. Due to convergence, there are more and more online newspapers which come for a cheaper price than physical newspapers. The unanswered question is will newspapers lose their business completely? We still do not know.