ture of the new media.
Uncertainty is a characteristic feature of the current Information Age. As recently as two years ago, the industry was excited about the prospects of interactive television. Predictions were made about television sets with the capacity to view 500 channels and movies on demand. At that time, few experts could predict the unprecedented growth of the Internet: "Now interactive TV trials have disappeared into technical and balance-sheet quagmires while hundreds of new 'channels' are added to the World Wide Web every single day" (Fulton 20). Clearly, any projections of the future of journalism must factor in the influence of the Internet.
Probably the biggest loser in the future of journalism will be newspapers. Newspaper readership is particularly sensitive to recessions, and the United States has been slow to emerge from a recession that hit newspapers hard. Added to these economic woes, newspaper readership in general has been on the decline for decades: "The percentage of adults who read a newspaper every day, in the 90 percent range in the 1950s . . . dropped into the 60s or below in most markets in 1991" (King 398). Newspaper editors now speak of "readers at risk," people that newspapers are at risk of losing as readers: young people, women, African-A
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