Are we seeing the demise of the American newspaper?
Is print journalism about to go the way of the horse and buggy?
Were that so, I am among those to say we will be turning a dark page in human history.
With the demise of major dailies in Denver and Seattle and, according to AP, news Goliath such as the Tribune Company (L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times), the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia News and the Minneapolis Star Tribune all seeking bankruptcy protection, with dozens more right behind - the face of American journalism may not be recognizable soon.
Top reporters are being forced into retirement and even the mighty New York Times has bowed to the Internet Age with an online version.
This trend is accelerating as newspaper budgets shrink because of the exodus of advertising dollars. In turn, that will decrease readership as papers fall back on vapid distillations of wire service and cable network summaries in lieu of their own hard investigative reporting.
Much is due to the growing influence of blogalism (a term that I suspect could enter Webster's fairly soon) which I will define simply as the dissemination of news by people without any particular training to do so.
But will this new hybrid provide a superior product to what we now have?
Can we be certain that anyone with a Web site, some writing skill and lots of free time on his or her hands will give us accurate facts that have not been subjected first to adequate research and editorial oversight?
While the democratization of the media and the dilution of monopolistic control by a small number of wealthy newspaper barons with self-serving ideologies is something we can applaud, I am not inclined to believe that anyone with modest skill at wielding a knife is ready to be a surgeon or that one with a natural gift of oratory is necessarily prepared to argue a legal case in a court.
Perhaps the news industry, like the auto and S&L industries, has been operating on defective business models for some time with often poor management. It is also possible that some papers have signed overly-generous labor agreements that have driven up costs, although it is equally arguable this has promoted greater retention of high-quality personnel.
But if automobiles are inferior, other companies can emerge or be re-invented to build better ones and financial institutions can and should be reined in when their excesses menace the nation's economy.
Newspapers, however, cannot be as easily replaced, albeit many have been repeatedly retooled or have changed ownership with mixed results.
However, government subsi-dization or - perish the thought - takeover is not an option in a nation steeped in the concept that a free society remains freer and healthier when responsible journalism acts as a restraint on government's excesses.
The infusion of an alternative media in the form of the blogs serves part of this function, but they have no reason to conform to standards that define good journalism. Nor will society be benefitted if our principal source of news rests on the fulminations of amateur scribes posing increasingly as experts.
And - I don't know about you - but I still like the feel of - cup of coffee in hand - turning pages and putting aside my IJ or some other publication to finish reading it when time permits, rather than going bleary-eyed at my computer, which doesn't travel nearly as well and could crash at any moment.
They'd be in a lot better shape if their corporate parents had not loaded them up with unrelated debt. (Sam Zell, I'm looking at YOU!)
April 16, 2009 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have no sympathy whatsoever for the demise of the newspaper industry. It is failing because it should. If newspapers had done what they do best which is investigative and factual reporting they would still be in business. They set aside their duty to be the whiplash of government and the establishment and instead became the inhouse p.r. firm of the government and establishment. Now that they've completely acquiesced to both neither the government nor the establishment needs them.
They made themselves irrelevant and obsolete by failing to give the public what it wants - factual, investigative reporting. Everyone has information, newspapers had the opportunity to evaluate, check and weigh that information for its reliability. Instead they themselves rely on "unnamed sources", "government sources" and "administration officials" to feed them propaganda which they uncritically pass on the public. They support with money and time "star reporters" instead of "star reportage" which leaves them with nothing to sell but personalities who in turn have no incentive to turn in anything but the most perfunctory and superficial writing while they pursue their real career of self-aggrandizement and promotion on tv talk shows.
Newspapers such as the NYTs and the WaPo demonstrate on a daily basis, a smug, contemptuous disdain for the readers by filling their pages with syndicated news reports and writers with no editorial supervision or even the simplest fact checking which is glaringly evident on their editorial pages where opinion is more valued than facts.
They are resistant to change, they are conceited in their regressive business model and they cannot bear even the slightest correction or criticism about their industry. How foolish and shallow they are to think that it's the loss of advertising dollars that have doomed them, while they are either too dull or stupid to rethink even their size and availability to the public. They wrote their own obituary, now all that is available to them is to die gracefully without whining and complaining.
April 16, 2009 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink