Recession has hit everyone: individuals and industries. The media which has been tracking the slowdown; reporting and analysing the havoc that has befallen the social and economic landscape, itself has become a victim.

The scene is really bad in the United States, where popular and big publications have either closed down or are facing imminent shutdown. The list is growing by the day.  

The world renowned Christian Science Monitor will come out with its last print daily newspaper edition on March 27. It will be online after that; and print edition will come out once in a week.

From March 30, the two major newspapers in Detroit — The Free Press and The News — will come out only three days a week.

Rocky Mountain News – the 150-year-old institution that’s Colorado’s oldest — closed last week. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, after 146 years of publishing, may close down next week. The Hearst Corporation, which owns the Post-Intellencer, has threatened to close down its other paper, San Francisco Chronicle.

On Feb 24th, it announced that it would have to pare down staff strength and put in place other cost-cutting measures. If these don’t work, the newspaper might even be closed down. With a circulation of over three lakh it’s the largest newspaper in the San Francisco Bay area. The paper has lost over $50 million last year (something like $1 million a week) and the worry is it might be more this year.

On February 19, the New York Times took a decision to suspend payment of dividend. This is the first time the board has taken such a decision after the company went public in 1969. Apparently the move will help the company save about $34 million. But, the dire predictions are that it will be hard for the paper to survive this year, if one goes by the rate at which businesses are plummeting. 

The number of journalists in the Los Angeles Times newsroom has fallen from around 1,200 in 1990 to half now. The Washington Post newsroom had a staff strength of around 900 some six years back; it’s now less than 700. 

Gannett is America’s largest publishing house. It brings out 85 daily newspapers, including USA Today, and over 850 non-daily newspapers across the nation. It cut 8,300 jobs in 2007 and 2008. 

All these are sending alarm bells ringing across the media industry in the States. Because, if the trend continues, and it gets worse, many cities will lose their dominant newspaper. And that doesn’t bode well at all for a democratic society.

What will the world be without big newspapers? There are two views here.

One, life will not be same again. Big newspapers have a place of their own in a society. They bring to public domain a lot of information that otherwise lies hidden. They trigger discussions and debates that help a society evolve itself.

Two, when one big papers goes, it will be replaced by many small media outlets. The days of the big are over, it’s micro level life and management. Technology has changed the world. It’s an irreversible change. The conventional printed newspapers — won’t completely vanish but — will become far fewer in number, but the process of dissemination of information, debates and discussions will continue — perhaps more vigorously — on a different plane.

I go by the second argument.