Age in the Press

By Hans Bergstrom

A paper by Hans Bergstrom, spring 2001 fellow, asks whether, in the face of an aging population, the print media is taking due notice? An aging society, and the issues that such a changing society brings, should affect the press in many arenas. It presents news as well as the potential to change news values. It affects the use of different media forms through the day. It will have an enormous impact on the economy. It changes living patterns and the most basic family interactions in ways that strongly affect patterns of media consumption. It is perhaps the most important transition to cover during the course of this century. This paper tries to cover an aging society in relation to various aspects of the press: its internal realities, its commercial relations and its public responsibilities.

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