In the many years since its inception, the Internet has drastically altered the way businesses operate. The way we get our news now is exponentially different than the methods our grandparents and great-grandparents used. It’s easier than ever to get the information we seek - All it takes is a few clicks. In addition to the ease of access, most of the stories we read are happening in real time whereas our ancestors may have had to wait until at least the next day to hear developments in a story.
As a result of modern technology, newspapers nowadays have suffered. Someone who has seen this evolution firsthand is Michael Montagna, Automotive and Real Estate Executive for the Niagara Gazette. The Niagara Gazette is the local newspaper for Niagara County in Western New York and its surrounding areas. It has been in operation since the late 1800’s. Montagna, a Niagara Falls native, has been in the news industry for almost 30 years. Shortly after attending college for Business Marketing & Human Resources, he started working at the Gazette and has been there ever since. His job is to assemble the advertisements and the real estate section of the newspaper. When he first started, this meant that he literally had to paste and arrange the sections, while now it is all done on a computer. Technology has changed the way his industry operates.
“In the last ten years, we’ve seen small declines,” Montagna said, “We went from around 56,000 subscribers to 17,000.” Of course, the Great Recession was less than 10 years ago so the Internet isn’t exclusively to blame for the decline. Nonetheless, the demographic that remains is very loyal and doesn’t want to change. “People want their paper in the morning and we have to provide that service. $50 to a kid today isn’t what it used to be.” One of the main challenges that the print news industry faces in a digital world is to continuously have to prove that newspapers are still relevant to the Gazette’s biggest clients.
Along with the change in mediums, the news that is reported had to be filtered. The Gazette has six reporters on duty. The challenging part of this is that every single story might not be newsworthy, so some cuts have to be made especially with the digital version. This is a challenge that all reporters face: Trying to decide what the public needs to know based on demographics for a given medium. Certain age groups, such as the Gazette’s customers that have been subscribers for many years, tend to rely on physical newspapers while others may exclusively flock to the digital version.
Montagna also doubles as the real estate executive for the Gazette, and similar to the newspaper industry, the real estate industry has also faced challenges with the Internet as their competitor. As the Internet became more popular, real estate had to downsize its catalogue. Montagna put the section together twenty years ago. Since then the section went from 30 pages down to 10. “As modern technology evolves, so does your product.” he said.
Michael Montagna has many years experience in this news industry and knows exactly how much technology has affected the way we get our news. From having to literally paste his ads together to putting them onto a computer, he knows as well as any person in the news industry how fast it has changed. “It’s been interesting seeing how the news industry has changed over the years...I think if I can sell in this market and sustain what I have, that’s something that keeps me going.”
