For daily print newspapers, the end is here

January 28, 3:20 PMAstrology ExaminerMaria Barron

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Daily print newspapers have reached the end of their life cycle, and there’s no turning back. Twelve years from now they’ll probably have gained the status of a “remember when.” We’ll say, “Remember when the news organizations used to deliver dozens of pages of rolled-up newsprint in a plastic bag on your doorstep everyday?”

Wearing both of my hats, as a newspaper journalist and an astrology examiner, I believe the vast majority of American daily newspapers will transition fully to web-only editions or to different types of niche print products within the next several years, long before we reach the last-gasp date of 2021, which is 12 years away. The Christian Science Monitor, Detroit Media Partnership and Las Vegas Sun are already moving in that direction.

The daily print press has known it is in a fading market for decades, but now it truly is 11 p.m. on a Doomsday clock that ends at midnight. The time is now to transition or die. In today’s business environment:

• Prominent journalism schools are overhauling their curriculum to emphasize Internet technology and (gasp!) marketing;
   
• Prominent journalists from daily print papers are rehashing the industry’s failure to take an early lead in jumping on the Internet bandwagon;
   
• Staff of the Rocky Mountain News have launched an Internet appeal and are organizing a candlelight vigil to save their jobs; and
   
• One reporter, Chris Freiberg, trying to do what he can to help, is hosting National Buy a Newspaper Day.

The sadness is undeniable for those of us who love daily newspapers, but so are the market indicators and so is the astrology of the situation. Niche print products, aimed at special readership markets and sold at central locations or delivered by mail, may still have a future, but daily general newspapers and home delivery? Those times are all but gone.

It’s all about Jupiter in Aquarius

Mass communication, in the sense of the dissemination of information that educates, is a Sagittarian activity, and Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter. Aquarius, the sign that Jupiter entered Jan. 5 of this year, is the great leveler, which takes things from the gatekeepers and spreads them among the populace. As a result of these recurring cycles of Jupiter in Aquarius and the changes they provoke, I can sit at my computer today and take in news gathered by media organizations all over the world.

History verifies that the most significant of changes in mass communications have occurred when Jupiter transits from Capricorn into Aquarius, as it has just done. This year, and these dozen years until the next time Jupiter enters Aquarius, the changes will be fast and furious in the news business. Because of Uranus and Pluto, there will be no turning back.

Take a look at the history:

As Jupiter moved from Capricorn to Aquarius in 1439-1440, Johannes Gutenberg of Strasbourg (then Germany; now France) perfected and unveiled his printing press and communication was revolutionized by the mass production of words on paper. There is documentation of Gutenberg’s invention dating to 1439, but he made it public in 1440.

As Jupiter moved from Capricorn to Aquarius in 1605-1606, Johann Carolus, also of Strasbourg, put into production the very first newspaper, Relation. He switched from making handwritten copies to printed copies in the summer of 1605, sought copyright protection for his product in the fall and took his twice-monthly pamphlet into its first full year of production in 1606.

As Jupiter moved from Capricorn to Aquarius in 1759-1760, the weekly and monthly pamphlets that passed for journalism up to that point began to be overtaken in Europe and the American colonies by the first daily newspapers focused on politics and the public sphere.

As Jupiter moved from Capricorn to Aquarius in 1937-1938, RCA moved from irregular television broadcasts in 1937 to instituting the first regular TV broadcast schedule in New York and Los Angeles in 1938.)

As Jupiter moved from Capricorn to Aquarius in 1973-1974, the computer network that would become the Internet was designed and published by American computer scientist Vinton Cerf as part of a project sponsored by the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and directed by American engineer Robert Kahn.

As Jupiter moved from Capricorn to Aquarius in 1996-1997, the number of online newspapers leapt from 154 to 3,622 as publishers realized en masse that a web presence was vital.

This year, as Jupiter moved from Capricorn to Aquarius, just as 2008 was giving way to 2009, the first of what is likely to be a flood of newspapers began transitioning from print products to online-only news sites.

Here we have an astrological trend that encompasses all three of the most significant shifts in the history of the news media that are still most relevant today – printed daily newspapers, TV news and the Internet – all taking firm shape with Jupiter in Aquarius. And everyone can see the direction things are going, toward the electric. Notable developments of related technologies have taken place on the other end of the Leo-Aquarius axis, when Jupiter was in Leo. The first radio news program, which was broadcast August 31, 1920, and the first worldwide web page, posted at the end of 1990, are in that related category.

Uranus and Pluto add emphasis

Two additional elements come into play to mark the current 12-year Jupiter cycle as the final Jupiter cycle for print dailies. The first of those is the position of Uranus, the planet of shocking change and the modern ruler of Aquarius. For the majority of developments that occurred as Jupiter entered Aquarius, Uranus was in an earth sign, keeping the changes grounded in the materiality of paper and presses and TV sets wired into a building’s power supply.

Two of the changes, the publishing of the design of the Internet and the advent of thousands of online newspapers, came when Uranus was in air signs, symbolizing a release of mass communication from specific equipment and anticipating its current ability to be reached through all sorts of wireless portable electronic gadgets.

But the birth of the modern daily press in 1760 and its anticipated rebirth in online-only format this year are the only developments in the list that have occurred while Uranus was in Pisces, the final, watery sign of the zodiac where things completely dissolve. The old ways of sharing news dissolved as the daily press arose in the revolutionary era, and now daily newspapers are dissolving in favor of all-electric formats for immediate dissemination of news.

The second element underscoring the end of the life cycle of daily newspapers is Pluto, the planet of death and rebirth in other forms, which has made one complete circuit of the zodiac during the era of the daily press and has returned to where he was when the era began.
 
Those involved in daily newspapers – journalists, ad staff, production people, circulation sales staff and delivery drivers – all face traumatic changes in this transition. But delaying the change only postpones the inevitable. The time for transformation is at hand.