The Observer: ‘Will Philadelphia be the Place Where the American Newspaper Dies?’

“The American city of Philadelphia “is running in a race no one wants to win: which major US city will be the first to lose all its daily papers?” Paul Harris of the TheObserver of London told that publications readers on May 24, 2009. In a long post headlined “Will Philadelphia be the place where the American newspaper dies?”, he noted:

Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, San Francisco, Miami, Denver and Newark are just a few of the other reluctant participants. The impact of losing all newspapers in these cities is potentially profound; many fear it would be a blow to American democracy. They worry that the watchdog role the press has played will be removed. The bedrock on which much of civic society has been built since colonial times will start to crumble. Yet one of these cities could lose all print news within a year.

Harris said, “You can choose metaphors to illustrate how technologically outdated newspapers have become in a media landscape dominated by blogs and the internet. They are vinyl records in an iPod world; videotapes in the era of DVDs and Hulu; typewriters in the face of the laptop. They are an old technology no one wants, needs or, increasingly, seems to care for. Certainly not in Philadelphia, where both the Inquirer and the Daily News are in bankruptcy.

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