The Commerce Times

Letter from the editors

The Internet is killing the print newspaper.

With society glued to computers and cell phones, the explosion of celebrity tabloids and dwindling attention spans, print newspapers soon might be the media’s newest doo-doo bird.

Scrolling through short, flashy articles has replaced thumbing through information-rich stories. Subscriptions and newsstands are vanishing as news goes online and is offered for free.

Many print newspapers are starting to make a revolutionary shift to become entirely digital products. Earlier this month, the 146 year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer rolled off the press for the last time. The 117,600 weekly readers get their updates exclusively on seatllepi.com.

Today’s print newspapers face the grim specter of closing due to decreased readership in the digital revolution and scant advertising dollars available in the current economic recession.

In the midst of this old-media massacre, The Commerce Times has faced many challenges since its first printed issue in November 2008:

As the baby-of-the-bunch amongst Ryerson University’s various student newspapers, our team has learned that exposure doesn’t happen overnight. Without money for stands, our members hand delivered 5000 copies of the Commerce Times every month into the hands of students.

We are not affiliated with the Ryerson School of Journalism and have had a challenging time adding to our team of contributors in the shadow of our fellow newspapers. We have succeeded in despite of these challenges and can only attribute these strides to what we feel is a fantastic team.

Our team currently consists of 15 people, a large jump from two editors, three journalists and one designer. Our team and paper continue to grow steadily. We are launching our first website today www.thecommercetimes.com. Our first event this March 10th was a huge success and we will be hosting a similar event again in the fall. We hope that you have enjoyed the Commerce Times this year. We will be back in the fall.