Tales of Online Journalism : How Seniors Quiver With Fear

The internet is a scary place. It's kind of like going into the ocean during the summer. You can swim in, body board, cool off, etc. It's this amazingly mysterious entity that you can easily have fun in ... but you never know.

Now, think of newspapers being the beach. I mean, the actual sandy part of the the collective beach location. You know exactaly what you're getting into. It's sand, it's hot, it's safe. You can't drown in sand, nor can sharks bite off limbs while baking in the sun.

So, let's bridge the two. It's rare that one will go to the collective beach and not enjoy both land and sea. This is the idea surrounding internet's influence on newspapers.

According to a USA Today article printed last year, "Eighteen percent of American adults cited the Internet as one of their two main sources of news about the presidential races, compared with 3% in 1996", the second being television. Nearly half (48%) went to the online version of one of the top newspapers of the country to get their political news: The New York Times.

Apart from convenience and availability, online accessibility is also saving readers money, reported a Business Week article in the summer of 2005. Archived articles in the Wall Street Journal website can be accessed at $79 subscriptions, significantly cheaper than the $215 price tag to receive the same content in print.

But let's get down to business: literally. An article in the New York Times revealed that while print advertisement spenditures in 2006 increased at a low 0.3 percent, online ads soared to a increased 35 percent. The article quotes analyst predictions that print publications will turn to online ventures, such as advertising, to make up for their financial short comings. At the time, online ads accounted for $613 million, which was reported to compare minimally with print ads. However, the article states that the statistics posted it's eighth consecutive quarter of growth.

Although many traditional print publications, such as the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and Associated Press - whose news articles appearing on sites such as yaHoo!- are turning towards online media avenues, it is still uncertain where the trend will explore over the next horizons.