Posted on 05/07/2019 4:28:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
I know, I know. Fake news! Media bias! Intellectual arrogance! That's my old profession, the newspaper business, as contemporary Americans understand it -- assuming they give our business any actual thought.
Probably not. Witness the dreary statistics compiled by The Wall Street Journal in what newspapers call, or used to call, a major takeout.
The Journal, one of three major papers seemingly assured a long life -- the others being The New York Times and The Washington Post -- writes that "time is running out" for local franchises unable to compete with Google and Facebook for advertising revenue. The market has shifted. The internet brings you everything, not just what local editors have selected and arranged for you. You choose now to believe or not believe, to read or not to read. Such liberation from intellectual authority the world never before imagined.
Newspapers, trying to stay alive, have established online presences, with "firewalls" to keep the freeloaders at a distance. Nothing much is working. According to the Journal, quoting professional estimates: "Local news publishers have been the hardest hit. The tech giants sucked up 77% of the digital advertising revenue in local markets in 2017, compared with 58% on a national level." Ow! It is small wonder the venerable Times-Picayune of New Orleans succumbed this week: swallowed by a local competitor.
A newspaper, like a bar or a running-shoe company, isn't in business for fun. It needs profit to keep the doors open. Says the Journal, quoting a University of North Carolina study: "Nearly 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004 and 2018, leaving 200 counties with no newspaper and roughly half the counties in the country with only one."
To which doleful account millions, were they paying attention, instead of checking their Facebook accounts, would say, "Yawn." I advise resisting the temptation. The connection between local newspapers and community prosperity is large and intimate. I do not say the internet can never replace it; I say the internet appears indifferent to the mission. Its preferred field of endeavor is national, if not international.
We cannot call those interests contemptible -- only inadequate. The local newspaper -- such as the one bold enough to hire me as a novice, with nary a journalism course on my college transcript -- represents a contract with its community. In return for the community's financial support, through subscriptions and advertising, the local paper undertakes to portray the community: its officials and nonofficials, its students and teachers, its churches and movie theaters, its failures, its successes, its ongoing challenges and opportunities, its past, its present, its future --festivals, parties, galas, fundraising enterprises. Most of all, in some venues, its hotshot football and basketball players.
I saw and did it all, during an 18-month stint. I'd probably -- 60 years later -- do it all over again. But to put it baldly, cornily, how many me's are forthcoming in the internet age? Not many, I wager. Everything worth communicating, more and more of us seem to believe, is best displayed on a screen, not a sheet of newsprint, its columns and headlines and ads arranged for complementarity and visual appeal: informal architecture, inviting leisurely inspection. Leisurely! That's out. We don't do it anymore.
The impending death of the newspaper -- and most especially the local newspaper -- is, I fear, part of the nationalization of life now going forth in America. No more local news of the normal, everyday sort. Big stuff, as opposed to the little stuff locals love in spite of the scorn of elites: births, deaths, the flip sides of life. Names, always names -- misspelled maybe, but that merely meant the name got renewed billing when the paper ran a correction.
Corrections? Certainly. We all made and still make mistakes, not always in the genial way my paper's onetime society editor managed to bring off: "Following a delicious repast," the lady informed readers, "the guests passed out on the lawn." They probably will continue doing such delicious things in the world of the internet. We just won't know about it, that's all.
local television went then local radio and now local newspaper coverage (even “alt” weeklies no longer publish print).
The only reason my family still takes an actual newspaper is because my 102 year old mother wants it. Once she dies and the others of her’s and the Boomer generation die, newspapers will be truly dead as well. (Everything my mother points out in the paper is something I read on line days to a week before.)
I stopped fooling with hard copy long ago but, if locally is any indication, they’re recruiting journalists right out of grammar school. Writing is so poor and undisciplined, it’s like they gave up trying to perfect their craft, long ago.
I just wonder if a newspaper could survive if they practiced real journalism. It seems we’ll never know and that’s a shame.
If your mother is 102 then aren’t you old enough to still be a newspaper reader? Average age of subscribers is late 60s I’ve heard
But those days are long gone. The presstitutes today are nearly illiterate.
My local paper is over $250 a year now. If you drop paper and go for the on line issue it only shaves $18 off the price.
Over the years they’ve dropped more and more of the local stuff and extras.
Plus they’ve gone the Never Trumper route.
In about three years when I retire I’m dropping the paper and my land line phone.
I think digital newspapers, on a five-day-a-week schedule, and structured for ONLY local and state news, could survive. But it’d have to be a totally different business model.
The two things that need to disappear....political anchored editorials, all references to DC news.
“If your mother is 102 then aren’t you old enough to still be a newspaper reader?”
I am 65 and the local paper is the Tallahassee DEMOCRAT. Until they started buying some of my articles I actually thought it was the Democratic party newspaper. It’s THAT bad. They were delivering it free on special advertising days like Thanksgiving. I called and complained and they said they had promised the advertisers a certain circulation and they had no control over where the papers were delivered. I threatened to sue because they were advertising with their collection of papers that my house was temporarily empty and it might be robbed. I worked my way up the chain until they finally stopped delivering the communist rag.
The author acts as if the demise of “news” papers is a bad thing. It is no more a bad thing than the demise of the horse harness industry when the automobile came along. In fact it might be a good thing considering how most media outlets (newspapers especially) are rabidly leftist in everything they do. Maybe if the Marxist reporters and editors had to actually work for a living rather than write fiction they might get to appreciate the conservative point of view.
how New York Times and The Washington Post are assured a long life after 3 years of lies is beyond me.
Haven’t bought a daily newspaper in years. Still subscribe to the small, local weekly paper.
Occasionally I’ll buy a newspaper for the intrinsic value of the paper itself. I use it for masking off large areas when painting. I would never read it.
Similar situation (96 yo dad likes sports page with TV lineup of all the sports activity for the day). Then the paper jumped $30 (from $60 to $90 for 8 weeks) .... the publisher jumped the price not that long ago to $60 and basically ‘rearranged’ where things showed up in the already very thin paper, to try to convince the subscribers that they were getting value for their extra bucks. The folks decided that the thin little annoyingly liberal paper wasn’t worth the money at the new price. They can’t deal with the phone so I called to cancel - VERY quickly, the young guy on the other end of the line offered 8 more weeks at the old price, which the folks accepted. We’ll see what happens in 8 weeks ..... the paper has to really be “hurting” with all the changes/price hike we’re seeing.
When their firewalls are septic barriers, what do they expect?
The Ministry of Truth is dying!
obituaries man....... never published a head of time on line
I also read USA Today occasionally (when travelling) for financial advice. Before you ask - USAToday says "Buy! Buy!", so I sell. And vice-versa.
But the big city rags? Haven't gotten them in years. I peruse them in the barbershop, occasionally....I'm surprised at how thin they're getting. The Sunday paper used to take all day to go through. Now, it's a couple of sections.
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