(May 8, 2009) — To sophomore Allen Sarkysian, the question is not whether or not newspapers will be eliminated from society—the question is when. Nearly 400 newspapers, among which are The New York Times and USA Today , have experienced a record drop in newspaper circulation this year, which accounts for up to 30% of their revenue, according to recent reports. Sarkysian believes this trend is primarily due to the availability of online versions of printed newspapers. He sees no value in paying for the content he could easily access online for free. “It’s just paying more for an extra piece of paper that you might not end up recycling anyway,” Sarkysian said. However, he says that unless newspaper companies find a way to generate revenue from online newspapers, society will resort to blogging, information from which he says is biased. Counselor Charles DeVore feels that the dependency on such slanted information could fragment society into different perspectives. “If it starts to fragment people into very, very different political camps, I think it will certainly change the way our political system operates,” DeVore said. Chemistry teacher Loussik Kassakhian, on the other hand, recently cancelled her subscription to the Los Angeles Times because she felt it is more opinionated than investigative. “It’s about advertisements, it’s about entertainment, and it’s about opinions,” Kassakhian said. “I don’t want opinions; I have opinions too.” Now she relies on the Internet to get news from international sources. According to math teacher and Wall Street Journal reader Virginia Karnik, newspapers looking to increase readership have traditionally presented the news with a twist. She believes the newspapers to survive the economic crisis will be ones which, like the Wall Street Journal , present not only the news, but its significance as well. Thus, Karnik believes that the decrease in newspaper readership can benefit society. “I think that the pressure for newspapers to stay alive—to change what they provide to the public—that’s going to actually improve democracy.” However, the major source of newspapers’ revenue lies in advertising, which too has declined in this economy. The Clark Chronicle , which solely relies on advertising to pay for printing costs, has noticed that companies are less inclined to place ads in the Chronicle and the Pantera . As a result, it is resorting to online publishing for the May and June issues. Editor-in-chief senior Will Newkirk says there are benefits to the online medium, including unlimited space for articles and audio and video files. “While it saddens me to see the Chronicle go out of print for the next two issues, I am excited by the possibilities offered by publishing online,” Newkirk said. According to Glendale High School newspaper advisor Patrick Lancaster, the Explosion has been experiencing a drop in advertising for the past ten years. “Unless things in the economy start looking up, online newspapers may be the best option we have,” Lancaster wrote in an e-mail explaining the Explosion ’s struggle to survive. English teacher Mary Mardirosian hopes this trend is only temporary. “I don’t think [the newspaper] is going to be completely extinct,” Mardirosian said. She says that there is “something special” about reading news in a printed newspaper as opposed to an online medium, almost like listening to music at a concert rather than from a recording. Karnik says that subscribing to a newspaper is a commitment which requires time and money. Some, like DeVore, are prepared to pay more to read their news in print. “I prefer to do it leaning back in a chair with a cup of coffee than leaning over a computer,” DeVore said. Others, like Sarkysian, have a different prospect for the future of newspapers. “For sure printed newspapers are not the answer in this age when technology is the influence on everything.”