The 103-year-old newspaper that covered my hometown, The Clovis Independent, printed its last edition this summer, suffering from the Internet surge and economic slump that has many print media outlets cutting staff and shutting their doors.
The Sacramento Bee, Modesto Bee and Fresno Bee have offered buyouts to their employees. The San Francisco Chronicle is looking for 125 staff to take buyouts before the end of this year, according to Editor and Publisher. The "Newspaper Cutback Tracker" on the blog Recovering Journalist says, "More than 6,300 employees at the 100 largest newspapers have lost jobs through buyouts or layoffs in the past year."
But this dismal news doesn't mean there will be a shortage of reading material for Americans, quite the contrary. Here's a case in point: UC communications specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey distributed a news release last week about a new odorless mosquito attractant developed by UC Davis entomologists. No major media outlets picked up the story, but it was all over the Internet:
Do you think American newspapers can be saved? Post a comment with your thoughts.