I was confused enough when I saw major print space devoted to lolcats, but to see even less space given to a much more important and serious topic—I don’t think “disappointed” even covers it. It’s a question that’s bothered me for a while, but this really sealed the deal. What is causing major media staples to radically shift their priorities and change the way they conduct business? Why does it seem like so many media corporations in different fields are trying to reach towards the same style of reporting? What we’re witnessing is the death of specialization in media. It may be the stereotypical answer nowadays, but I’d pin the blame for this on the growing influence of the Internet on print media in this country.

These changes run far deeper than a single article about an Internet meme. Back in March, Time magazine underwent a major design change. The overall layout of the magazine was modernized, with a greater focus on images to draw the reader’s attention instead of boring them to death with all text. Article lengths seem to have generally been shortened, and the first half of the magazine is little more than pages of quick news features. Plenty of quotes by famous people in the news, lots of quick references to exciting happenings—especially online— enough cute maps and graphs to engage anyone – but significantly less in the way of long researched articles and analyses.

It’s not just Time, either. This focus on breadth over depth has cropped up in other places—even the New York Times. Around the beginning of August, the New York Times reduced the page size of its print version, apparently to save on printing costs. We got less text and fewer articles in the paper itself, but we were promised more features on nytimes.com. Though this may seem inevitable if the NYT were in a budget crunch, it’s less easy to take when they’re reducing income in other areas; it’s been rumored that TimesSelect, the paper’s pay-for online service, is going to become free to the public in the coming months.

Clearly, cost is not the issue with these changes. Both publications now have extensive websites, a requirement, sure, in this age. But do they both need breaking news sections? Why should a paper or magazine that focuses on a detailed recounting or analysis of major news stories need to join in the constant bombardment of news online? Now usually when people go down this avenue of argumentation, they decry the growth of the 24-hour news cycle. They claim that this constant stream of news, no matter how unimportant, is destroying the intellectual aspects of our media and saturating the minds of media consumers. The mere presence of the rapid-fire cable news stations and their Internet outlets isn’t the problem, however. The problem comes when every segment of the media tries to replicate this pattern. Internet news sites and the 24-hour cable stations fulfill a very specific media niche. They provide instant coverage of breaking news stories and give a brief spurt of insight about a whole slew of issues in a very rapid progression. What they don’t do is present in-depth research into a story or a well-developed insightful look into the news. This has long been the role of news magazines and the more upper-crust papers like the New York Times. Many cities had two or more newspapers for this reason— one that quickly disseminated the news and another to provide more thorough analysis. Go grab a copy of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News and tell me you can’t see this distinction.

As the major cable news outlets and now Internet news has developed, many newspaper companies have feared, for good reason, that they would lose readership. Who’s going to wait for the Daily News in the morning when you can check CNN. com for a rundown of the news? This only makes sense, however, where the niche filled by a paper intersects with that of rapid-fire news. As newspaper after newspaper panics and tries to build up a huge Internet presence to combat their sliding readership, the trend spreads to the more insight-heavy papers and news magazines. Print media outlets whose niches are nowhere near threatened by CNN and Google News panic as well, and we end up with breaking news reports on nytimes.com and time.com.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Well, maybe not. Having instant access to the news online is a fantastic thing, and it really brings people face-to-face with global goings-on, who never had that kind of opportunity before. If Time and the New York Times want to get in on that instant news market, then all the better for them—it’s a constantly growing niche that I doubt will ever really fill up. But what we need to hope is that they don’t entirely discount their established role in their effort to catch up with the Internet. This niche of well-developed, heavily researched analysis of the news cannot be replaced by the Internet. Online communities may be great for quickly covering a wide range of topics, but it requires experts—knowledgeable people getting paid to do this—to really analyze the news. If the few pieces of media that still serve this role throw it all away, we won’t be left with anything more than a world of news tickers.