“Journalism is dying,” they tell me — all the time. In fact, I expect to hear it every time someone asks me about my plans for the future. It echoes in my head as I brainstorm story ideas for the next edition of The Lion’s Tale. I wish I could stop it, but I cannot. Instead, I wonder, ‘What if journalism is dying?’

When I drive through my neighborhood, I see disheveled yellowing plastic bags lying in driveways getting rolled over by Toyota minivans. What if this is the final step of the journalistic process? The one that I did not review in Journalism I: interview, outline, write, edit, edit, edit, watch it get run over by a car, eventually scrape it off the driveway and toss it.

I see the same thing in school. I have found The Lion’s Tale, into which we poured countless hours, sitting just below a tray of half-eaten mac and cheese and fish sticks in the cafeteria trash can. It is hard to maintain hope in the future of journalism.

For me, print media is much more than headlines, small words and a classic Old English style font. It is a remnant of the past, but it is also a snapshot of the present. Paging through a newspaper, I retreat from the onslaught of text message dings and focus on a deeper analysis than what can be understood from the running banner of Breaking News.

I am sequestered from the world, even while reading about it. Clenching the gritty paper under my thumb, I think in a way that would be impossible with a bright touch screen or a shiny keyboard.

I recently read an article about a group of high school journalists in Kansas who investigated the qualifications of their incoming principal and found that she had claimed false degrees. After the students printed a front-page story in their school paper, the principal resigned. Their school paper, printed in ink on a wide sheet of newsprint, was not relegated to the driveway. In fact, the newspaper made the news: its headline made headlines, as other papers wrote about the high school journalists. Journalism was very much alive.

Even as journalism becomes a multi-platform endeavor and many publications work primarily online, I believe there is great value in continuing the tradition of print journalism. While I am always truly excited to tackle video, online stories and the latest interactive graphics, there is a reason we still distribute the print edition of The Lion’s Tale.