My Google Reader greeted me with the news that yet another newspaper went under. This one hit a little closer to home: it was one of the first to offer me a job out of college. I had a handful of job offers, and I turned them all down. At the time, journalism no longer interested me. I had no desire to work 55-60 hour weeks without overtime, and I had been warned by other journalists to jump off of the sinking ship and save myself before committing myself to a career in newspapers.

I accurately predicted the demise of newspapers.

No, it didn't take Martha Stewart-like insider knowledge to see it coming. Anyone who reads a newspaper understands that the broadsheet is horribly antiquated.

I first worried about the future of print newspapers in May 2006. I was a reporter at a mid-sized newspaper in North Carolina. One of my first assignments was to cover Memorial Day weekend festivities at Fort Bragg (that is a post for a different day). My editor told me that he wanted around 16-20 (column) inches for a story in the next day's newspaper, a short piece for an afternoon update on the website, and a video to accompany my story on the website.

I headed off to Fort Bragg, eager to make my editor proud. As soon as I got there, I was pulled aside by the PAO (Public Affairs Officer), who told me what I could and couldn't do. I wasn't allowed to take pictures of certain military vehicles and buildings-- no big deal. When I headed down to “press row”, I discovered that I was the only print journalist there. To my left was the local CBS affiliate, and to the right was a reporter from CNN.

As soon as I got situated, I got to work. I combed the crowd, searching for a story to tell. I had a great interview, so I decided to head back to press row. The ceremony was starting, so I had to shoot video for the website. However, there was one small problem: I was shooting “video” with a point-and-shoot camera that shot video in a tiny resolution, with an equally poor frame rate.

I felt horribly out of place. Here were two large television networks on both sides of me shooting video on cameras that cost more than my car AND house that I rented, and I was shooting video on a point-and-shoot (we called it a dummy camera) that was two years old. It was like I was a tourist that had accidentally wandered into the wrong area.

Once I got back to the newsroom, I uploaded my story and video onto the website. I was embarrassed to even post the video—it was pixelated and the sound quality was terrible.

The truth is, newspapers were horribly slow to adapt to the way that times were changing. We even made jokes about it in the newsroom. However, I doubt that we'd be joking about that if I still worked there, since a third of the newsroom got laid off.

Why did newspapers wait so long to integrate QUALITY web content into their daily operations? It's too late to recover for a lot of news organizations. I believe that in the next few months we're going to hear about more newspapers that are going to go under. It will only get worse from here.

What needs to happen?

Newspapers need to figure out how to deal with the current revenue crisis. Why should I buy a copy of the paper when I can read it online for free? Why should I place a classified ad in their paper when I can place an ad on Craigslist?

Gannett Co.'s print advertising revenue fell 22.7% in 4Q2008.

It will take the slow and painful death of many more newspapers before they decide to wake up and change the way they do business.

Perhaps Michael Malone of ABC News is right—maybe newspapers need to purchase Craigslist?

Perhaps papers should be subsidized? I don't have the answers, of course. If I did, I wouldn't be sitting here right now.