Newspapers may be dying, but the internet didn’t kill them — and journalism is doing just fine

While the democratization of distribution and the atomization of content have definitely accelerated the decline, journalism professor George Brock argues that newspapers have been on a slippery slope for some time, and that what journalism is going through is a natural evolution rather than a disaster.

Everyone has a favorite example of the decline of the industry, he says, such as the sale of the Boston Globe for 97 percent less than it sold for two decades ago or the massive rounds of layoffs that continue to sweep through the business. It’s certainly easy to find that kind of evidence of doom, but Brock, who runs the journalism program at City University in London, argues that “this picture of deterioration is one-dimensional, incomplete and out of date.” Journalism is flourishing if you know where to look.