Newspapers: Shrinking Pages and Smaller Staffs

SI leader Mike Arvizu gazes over the Big Papa Pizza that is about to be served to the students who showed up for the final exam SI study session on July 20.

Today's medianote comes from a National Public Radio story about cost-cutting at the New York Times. The story provided a good jumping-off point for a discussion about the shrinking and aging of newspaper readership and what can be done to reverse it.

While it was clear that few of my students were avid newspaper readers, it was also apparent that many of them wanted to be informed about important domestic and international issues and were appreciative of serious journalism. The key seems to be reformatting these serious news sources around the technology that plays a huge part in their lives: the computer, the Internet, and the cellphone.