The post title or link below takes you to astute analysis of another reason print news is gasping its last.
This guy observes that newspaper writing is stuck in the 19th century and assumes its readers rely primarily on papers for information.
An excerpt:
The software industry has a concept known as “legacy code,” meaning old stuff that is left in software programs, even after they are revised and updated, so that they will still work with older operating systems. The equivalent exists in newspaper stories, which are written to accommodate readers who have just emerged from a coma or a coal mine. Who needs to be told that reforming health care (three words) involves “a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system” (nine words)? Who needs to be reminded that Hillary Clinton tried this in her husband’s administration without success? Anybody who doesn’t know these things already is unlikely to care. (Is, in fact, unlikely to be reading the article.)
The blogger also rags on the "inverted pyramid" style, which was sacred even as recently as my mid-1980s time as a journalism undergrad.
The inverted pyramid style supposedly came along during the American Civil War, when field correspondents--not knowing whether the telegraph lines they used for transmission might fail at any moment--sent the most essential information to their editors first.
It's not 1864 anymore.
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