Before long, daddy won’t hide behind The New York Times at breakfast, subways will be equipped with immaculate cell phone reception to satisfy our dire digital fixations, and the gradual demise of newspapers will annihilate once and for all the enemies of our fingertips – paper cuts.

All of this may ring success to some, but not to second-year Grady College master’s student Allie Goolrick, curator of ATHICA’s newest exhibit “Free Press in Free Fall.”

“Newspapers are known for being a really in-depth storytelling portal,” she said. “I think a lot of people are afraid that once that content jumps online, you’ll lose the depth and the accuracy of the reporting, which is a very real concern.”

By now, the declining state of the newspaper industry in the wake of the Internet is old news to most everyone. However, fewer people are aware of the consequences this transition will bring, both from a journalist’s perspective and the public’s.

“More and more, because journalists are having to meet the demands of the Web and multitask, we’re losing the sort of specialized newspaper reporting, investigative journalism or really in-depth coverage that we had before,” Goolrick said.

“Free Press in Free Fall” seeks to explore this predicament. The exhibit opens this Saturday at the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art and features works by 13 North American artists that address the role of the news media in a constantly changing society.

The works are more symbolic than flashy; the subject matter is meant to be captivating and thought-provoking.

The gallery is split into two realms: the colorful, vibrant “Print World” and the stark white, minimalist “New Media World.”

The schism was not intentional but something that evolved as the exhibit was set up.

“We started thinking immediately about the concept of white noise and the idea that we’re inundated with this stream of instant information all the time that’s hard to distinguish sometimes,” Goolrick said.

The exhibit’s featured artist is Kathryn Refi, whose piece “All Things Considered” uses red adhesive dots on white paper to indicate what places were mentioned in the news on NPR over the course of a year.

Also notable is a piece by artist Gary Duehr, which depicts 15 newspaper images re-photographed on a cell phone.

“We don’t have any real sense of where these images came from or what’s happening in them,” Goolrick said. “All you know is that they’re these incredibly gut-wrenching images that you can’t look away from.”

Goolrick emphasized the exhibit is important not only for artists and journalists, but for any student concerned about free press and democracy.

“I think the public has a huge role in the future of the news media,” she said. “I hope that this will make people realize the importance of journalism.”