Many believe that the newspaper is going the way of the horse and buggy.
A few months ago, the London-based Economist magazine asked the question: Who killed the newspaper?
The Economist is hardly alone in noticing that newspapers are withering along with their readership. It has been a decades-long-trend. James Fallows, Ken Auletta, and Pete Hamill are among those who have taken on the subject, each with his own version of how and why newspapers have fallen into decline.
Jeff Jacoby, in a recent Boston Globe column, picked up the thread, asking “Will Newspapers Survive?” Jacoby documented that readership since the early 1970s has dropped almost by half. Even television news is a far cry from what it used to be – underscoring the notion that sometimes more isn’t better.
As a former newspaper man myself, I have watched the decline of newspapers with a mixture of concern and regret. First my career, then my friends’ careers and then my country’s future seemed at stake at various stages of the institutional decline. Over many a lunch or dinner I have debated the dilemma facing the news industry. Many of the reasons given for the challenges facing the newspaper and the media in general are well known, but perhaps worth recounting.
- Corporate control ranks high among critics, as business moguls with minimal love for the First Amendment and maximum respect for the almighty dollar have taken charge. Today, almost all major media are run by a handful of major corporations accountable to corporate profit, not the long-term health of American democracy, or so the argument goes. Rupert Murdoch represents the worst aspects of this trend from the point of view of media watchdog groups such as FAIR and Media Matters. I am not sure the watchdogs on the Right are all that thrilled either.
- The internet is another arrow aimed at the heart of the news industry, as readers – particularly younger readers – flock to blogs, websites and other forms of electronic communication.
- Newspapers and the networks are responsible for their decline, argues Rush Limbaugh, because their leftist tilt has driven away an audience that has grown weary of the endless bad news stories that attack the country and the values most Americans share.
- Television – its 24-hour news cycle – may be the biggest culprit. Why read newspapers or magazines when you can tune in at any time of the day and get the basics that must folks need to keep up with the world. It might not be prize-winning journalism, but who has time these days anyway?
- Journalists are no longer seen as disinterested parties pursuing the truth, but as elites who themselves profit from pushing certain agendas. The revolving door between the halls of power and the news studios underscores this concern.
- As America has grown increasingly mobile, devotion to local papers and news has fallen. USA Today, once seen as the death knell of responsible journalism, has become the nation’s newspaper and it is far better than once expected, but the impact on local papers has been felt. Loyal local readership is increasingly rare.
- Finally, journalism itself as a profession – because it has ceased to be relevant – might be responsible. This is a self-feeding problem. People need newspapers and networks to handle tough, complex reporting, but that costs money and with advertising revenues dropping, hard news and investigative reporting have given ground to sensational crime stories and celebrity news.
Still, there are grounds for being optimistic. As all of this has unfolded, people still care about the news. Who could have predicted the talk radio phenomenon 25 years ago? Today, millions of Americans, left, right and center, turn to radio to hear issues discussed and debated, sometimes for hours a day. Sooner or later a liberal or leftist champion will find the right formula and begin to compete with the conservatives.
Moreover, some of the online publications provide excellent information for their niche audiences – Slate magazine, Salon, Townhall.com, the Drudge Report, Frontpagemag.com, etc., not to mention great online newspapers and magazines. (I am myself a big fan of the New York Review of Books archive.) Millions of Americans can read more news, more quickly, and balance perspectives by cross-referencing against other sites, reporters and commentators. This is a good thing.
Finally, there are people dedicated to the idea of a free press and willing to do something about it. Take Herbert Sandler, who has set aside $30 million to develop a new media organization called ProPublica, which will focus on enhancing investigative reporting and (he hopes) strengthening our democratic system. As the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports it, Sandler is not alone as other journalists and philanthropists are finding a niche demand for tough, incisive reporting that many feel is not being provided adequately by the big media.
This is all to the good of our democracy and should be applauded, as should Sandler’s insistence that there will be no sacred cows. Tough reporters should go after government and private business corruption. They should be as tough on the philanthropists who hide their billions in tax-protected foundations while asking that the rest of us be taxed, as they are on government practices that bilk us and leave the taxpayer to foot the bill. Charities, defense contractors, corrupt national and local politicians – all should be fair game.
It will be a sad day if the newspaper ever really does go the way of the horse and buggy, but the need for news, information and critical reporting will always be in demand and it is heartening to realize that a free society always seems to find innovative ways to give its citizens the information they demand and need.
shadroui@yahoo.com
Read more articles by George Shadroui
I also used to lament people seem to read less, at least less worth reading. There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of printed material, however, and if newspapers are feeling a pinch, it is only a measure of how much more people are engaged by the new media. I, certainly, haven’t stopped reading news. If anything, I can and do read more today because I have multiple sources available to me, many of which cost me nothing. I still read the occasional hardcopy newspaper, but I am finding it harder and harder to justify that.
The Internet represents the next Gutenberg revolution. When Gutenberg sold his first bible, monastic scribes all over Europe tore out their collective hair and bewailed the death of scholarship. Something was indeed lost. Mostly, they lost a monopoly on knowledge and the reverence that goes with being sole purveyors of the ‘sacred wisdom’. Gutenberg made reading widely available to the middle-classes and, somewhat, even to the poor. This, in turn, triggered the Renaissance and Enlightenment, so what was lost has been more than recompensed. The Internet is making possible a readership to anyone wanting to be heard, and this, too, must lead to some amazing developments. The printing press, through knowledge transfer, not only made possible far more discourse, it spurred enormous innovation, savings, trade, entertainment, art, quality of life improvements, wealth and freedom. If the printing press can do all this, of what will this new miracle make us capable? To me, that is far more exciting than the demise of the newspaper.
Two more things should, perhaps, be included in Shadroui’s causes for news-print decline: insufficient competition and pathologic adherence to ideology. Even before the Internet, readership was falling off. Partly, this was, as he says, due to the rise of radio and television; and the relative convenience of those media. However, as the same cannot be said of Internet readership (most of us are reading more, not less), something else must have been happening. Could it be newspapers are stimulating much of their own declining readership? Newspapers have long been advocates of the socialism that has taken over our schools and now passes for education, and defend it almost unconditionally. What liberal newspapers write is parroted in the schools, and vice versa. In order to defend increasingly radical ideas as though the height of reason, newspapers and schools have had to, literally, dumb-down what is and how taught to assure succeeding generations internalize party dogma. Together, they have turned out cadres of people who never learn to think independently, and are made averse to anything which disturbs. This does not make for a readership that invites stimulation; it makes for an audience threatened by it. Yet, even brainwashed, people are not stupid; and if what they are presented invariably fails to stimulate, never varies as to message or content, they loose interest in it. Without sufficient competition, journalism has insularized to the point lightweights like Maureen Dowd and Katie Couric represent the news elite. Add to this the recent consolidation of newspapers into very few hands with no incentive to compete, and we have a surefire formula for killing off interest. I can pretty much assume this gradual decline in quality has put other readers off the way it does me. Internet competition is forcing newspapers to change tactics, and that may turn out the only thing to save newspapers from their own folly.
Lastly, I respectfully disagree Rupert Murdoch represents ‘the worst aspect of this trend”, because, at least, he’s adapting with the times. Only in the sense he’s not wasting resources saving a dying dinosaur can he said to be ‘worst’; worst in the eyes those who worship the old way so much they're feeling he's disloyal to their cherished idol perhaps. I know it hurts to let go, but the only constant is change.
Comment by Robert W. Stapler | November 20, 2007
thanks for the comment and the interesting take. I would observe that lack of competition is directly related to the consolidation of corporate control, and the media's ideological agenda is mentioned in bullet three.
Comment by George Shadroui | December 4, 2007