There will be no well-wishers at Newspaper’s bedside. No “Get Well Soon” cards will be placed on the mantle. There won’t even be a funeral.

For all things considered, few people will care that Newspaper died, at least in his original print form. He’ll still live on in infamy, though, on the Internet, and that’s perfectly fine as far as most people are concerned.

And honestly, Newspaper doesn’t deserve sympathy, nor does he ask for any. Just like the domestic auto industry, the newspaper industry is falling victim to changes in technology and a slow adjustment to the new information technology era in which our world is engulfed.

As The State News prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday next week, it’s reasonable to question how many more it will have in the print form. With the Rocky Mountain News ceasing operations Friday, The Columbus Dispatch laying off a quarter of its editorial staff on Tuesday and the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News cutting their daily home deliveries to just Thursday, Friday and Sunday in the coming weeks, newspapers are indeed becoming an endangered species.

Call it naïvete, but newspaper journalists are sticking to their craft. I’ve wanted to be a newspaper journalist since I was 10 years old, a quickly conceived career choice for the sake of earning a good grade on my fifth grade “What do you want to be when you grow up?” project. But newspaper journalists live and die with their profession because they love it so much they don’t want to think of a life without deadlines, interviews and breaking news.

It’s an unsettling time for journalism students, just as it is for any other student who has to deal with this depleting job market. Although the newspaper industry is on a respirator, the worry of finding a job transcends this profession.

It is time every student evaluates what lies ahead in the future, as paid internships are becoming more scarce and competitive, several industries express stagnant or declining growth and more students are flooding the job market as the baby boomers hold onto their careers because of investment losses.

By some odd stretch of logic and fear, I can empathize with autoworkers and their families. We both are part of industries that saw the changes occurring right in front of them, but preferred to be apart from that world and a part of a soon-to-be long distant past. Some economists, businesspeople and many other individuals will call this natural selection. In the survival of the fittest, maybe newspaper journalists are simply flabby and weak.

People don’t consider the fact we’re trying to evolve, but there are so many variables working against us. In this economy, advertisers have little money. There is no good way to generate revenue from the Internet. People no longer need to wait for the morning newspaper for in-depth accounts of the day’s happenings.

Many people are unaware of the pressures newspaper journalists face. Newspapers across the country have had to cut staff members while adding to the responsibilities of the remaining few.

Reporters are no longer simply gathering facts and writing stories — they’re doing podcasts, taking photographs, writing up-to-the-minute stories for the Internet and compiling and editing video and audio presentations. The workload is piling up with fewer reporters to take on daily tasks.

If there were a good solution to the problems the newspaper industry faces, well, I wouldn’t have to write this column. Obviously, there are problems this profession must address, and soon.

But for the people who think their Internet content will remain free and available, that they will be able to read The New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Thomas L. Friedman just before they click on another window to read Sports Illustrated columnist Peter King, well, they’re dreaming — just like the auto and newspaper industries that hope to make it out of this recession unscathed.

Zach Colman is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at colmanz1@msu.edu.