“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer that latter.” Thomas Jefferson
Newspapers have had an honorable history in the U.S. From the first newspaper in 1690 until today, they have reported on the American Revolution, covered political and social catastrophes and successes, and examined American values, reminding us of our errors and suggesting ways to heal. Newspapers were and still are our collective conscience and a backbone for democracy.
In the early 19th century mass circulation of paper news was born and in 1990 newspapers had their best circulation. For the last two decades the major story has been its decline. Sales, advertising and circulation have plummeted, and that has occurred as the digital world fortified itself. The printed Chicago Sun Times, the newspaper I grew up on, recently faced an embarrassing death. And the largest newspaper conglomerates like the Washington Post Company died on the stock exchange floor. Many newspapers, including the Blade and the Sentinel Tribune, have now become hybrids, part paper and part digital. Papers like the NYTimes and the Wall Street Journal have done that too, successfully. That may be a desperate move to sustain themselves until their well dries up.
Of course, losing the newspaper would have a high cost. Newspapers have many valuable features, and most share news in a digital format. They have a long history and tradition that can guide editors’ thinking and writing; they educate citizens following standards build-up over centuries; subscription and advertising revenue can pay for staff salaries, though both are drying up; they save money by going online one or more days a week; some papers can survive as paper/digital hybrids; they provide a long-term physical archive; they are edit-resistant and easily shared, globally in their online presence. Perhaps most important is that paper news is not very vulnerable to moral theft in the form of lies, fake news and Russian interference.
The pre-internet 1950s and 1960s were the golden age of journalism with little competition outside the reliable bounce on our front door when the newspaper arrives. We could depend on and trust reporters like Edward R. Murrow, Joan Didion, David Miller and Seymour Hirsch. Can anyone name one “great” thinker or public intellectual now writing online news (excepting Jan Larson McLaughlin and David Dupont of course).
Fifty years ago, for the baby boomer generation, the most trusted name in the U.S. was Walter Cronkite, the CBS newsman who delivered the nightly news. TV viewing grew in our homes starting in the late 1940s; Cronkite feared the power, strength, danger and invasion of the early digital age. He warned about shallow debates, sketchy soundbites, short attention spans, and proliferation of the screen image over the loss of substance. (Mark Travis)
For newspapers, getting to the “real story” takes a great deal of legwork. A journalist can make numerous phone calls, read widely on a subject, write press releases and develop a story line; she talks to her supervisor and rewrites; verifies facts; investigates a single topic in depth; writes multiple drafts.
In contrast, Cronkite feared a “couch-potato society,” free to gorge on sports, quiz shows, beauty pageants, endless ads, love and sex-hungry bachelors, and preachers. Of course, all these distractions compete with the evening news and the daily paper. How does one lead a focused and examined life in a distracted world?
Certainly, newspapers have flaws: Editors and reporters can be fired: there’s high cost in material and labor; news can be dated quickly compared to electronic media; advertising revenue and circulation can be stolen by digital advertising; paper is biodegradeable but printing presses, delivery trucks and ink are not; digital media are drawing readers away in droves. The consequences of digital theft are many: newspaper staffing down 60% in the last 30 years. Paid circulation down from $62 million to $35 million. In the last decade, advertising, the major source of revenue, was off $27 billion. Four years ago Google made four times the total ad revenue of the newspaper industry.
The winners of the paper/digital war are digital media which have and will have the staying power that newspapers lack. Digital news does not have to depend on readership numbers and advertising…even an audience of one would not kill the story. Digital news offers a broad topical reach, global in fact; they are inexpensive and have stolen revenue from paper news; news can be to the minute current; they are easy to archive; staff can be low in numbers (only two at BG Independent News); videos can be included.
On the other hand, the digital world has grown with few or no controls. Digital news organizations can multiply in the absence of ample funding or a moral compass; digital news is vulnerable to popularity contests or political movements; many have small staffs; mega-media like Facebook and Twitter can spread lies easily; data storage on zip drives might become outdated; popularity can kill newspapers; it’s much too easy, especially, for the far-right and alt-white to spread dangerous lies, innuendo, and often hate in the forms of anti-Semitism, homophobia, immigrant phobia, and misogyny.
Most damaging, perhaps. is the toxic loneliness that Facebook, Twitter and the rest have brought us. They make us more lonely. In a 2012 article in Atlantic, Stephen Marche, a journalist who writes for Esquire, described the online loneliness as an epidemic harming our souls. It’s now possible to be in contact every hour of the day and night. We suffer from “unprecedented alienation.” Our stress levels and suicides rise. We have endless forms of socializing but the “more connected we become, the lonelier we are.”
There are some vehicles that can counter digital dangers like social alienation: one is called “digital minimalism.” The creator of this movement is Cal Newport, and his book is Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. His thesis is that we need to severely limit our online time. Newport gives us a taste of minimalism: folks who can sustain a long conversation, get lost in a good book, write a long and sustained letter or article, and leave their iPhone.
Some organizations are trying to fill the gap resulting from the collapse of so many newspapers, especially in small and medium-sized towns. One of the most successful is non-profit/digital ProPublica which has since 2007 provided 21 US news organizations a year’s funding and editorial guidance. In 2010 it received its first Pulitzer Prize, the first awarded to a digital news company. With almost 200 national partners, it has investigated issues like Hurricane Katrina and the Sackler family. With a news staff of 150, spending will approach $32 million this year. The company gives our President credit for saving the NYTimes.
Thomas Jefferson said that newspapers need to be saved even if that means sacrificing government. It appears that newspapers are not long to stay and that government and society are poisoned with polarization, distrust and antagonism. Still, the social collaboration and integration we’re seeing with coronavirus reminds us that our better angels are still present: our schools and universities, our doctors, our mayors and governors, our service clubs, our mosques, churches and temples, our vets, our arts and business communities and our Constitution.
Tom Klein
BGSU Professor Emeritus of English
Bowling Green
