Like Larson, Millbrat and Skurka, I love print because that is what I grew up with. I even love the smell and look of old worn books, and find digital-media a bit cold. Like Millbrat, I have fond recollections of my father’s daily cover-to-cover ingestion of the Washington Post; and how much I mimicked this thirst for fresh knowledge. However, I also was critical of his choice of reportage as I found much in the Post that was clearly biased even when factual; a flaw that has only intensified as the bias remains bereft of facts to support it.

Also, like Larson, Millbrat and Skurka, I take love of reading as an indication of some intelligence. But, unlike Larson, I don’t posit the shift from print proves any coarsening of engagement. There are reasons to think there is such a coarsening, but not the demise of or disinterest in print. Today, I read the equivalent of three books a week, but may go 3-4 weeks between printed newspapers. How could I do that if there was no market for the digital media? Obviously, then, a whole lot of other folks besides me are taking advantage of new media.

As a kid, I’d briefly read the headlines before scrambling to get at the funnies after my elder brothers had dismembered them. Before I’d finished, it was time for school; and by the time we got home, the paper was wrapped around something frozen or serving as kitty-litter. Yet, I had an insatiable literary appetite for which the daily paper was but one source. My brothers would chide me that, if there was nothing else handy, I’d read every scrap on cereal boxes and board-game instructions (true). I read the family encyclopedia from A-T (only stopped at T because Mom dropped the subscription before we had a full set) and the dictionary including instructions for decipherment. I read the Bible; despite which I retained little from it as all those ‘begats’ got right confusing. We read classics and eclectics. My dad liked poetry, most of which I never got but found poems of my own to like. I loved science-fiction and comic-books, both of which my father regarded as ‘trash’ and became, for me, a minor cause for rebellion. So, I was a ‘futurist’ open to new modes which my parents distained; whereas, now, I am old-foggy to younger generations because I mostly read politics and engineering. But, hey, I do read them online! And, of course, I have read history to the point of amateur historian, and might have gone professional if not for a greater love of machines.

My experience with my own kid and his friends is very different, few of whom read anything and prefer TV and radio information to print. What they get from the Internet is mostly entertainment, though some news must ‘leak’ through. This is because my son is learning impaired (as are most of his pals, he has only one friend in college who is regarded the ‘egghead’), so I am not well positioned to judge the younger crowd. My sister’s boys, on the other hand, are as voracious as we were; reading and studying a great deal. The younger of the two is a computer hack (much as I once was); as much alive to the inner workings as to games. He is a wealth of information on his cherished subjects, much of which he gleans from Internet readings. On other topics he’s indifferent and an indifferent scholar, as were my brothers. Both boys are multilingual and earn good marks in school without nearly the prodding it took just to keep my boy from giving up. Their house is full of books (as is mine) few of which have not been read by everyone. This encourages me (at least generationally) and makes me think the apathy to reading may be individual and not particularly societal. Our generation had only print media to read; I-Pod and Kindle not yet having been invented.

Finally, I must disagree with Pat Skurka the assertion that print’s demise is due to bias is unfounded or exaggerated. Several studies have been conducted (at least one media sponsored) demonstrating this bias both exists and the public is reacting to it negatively; and has turned to alternative media that bypasses the old media it no longer trusts. One study found journalists to be 80% liberally-inclined based on a combination of voting habits, political-contributions, and reportage. This is out of all proportion to the general public, which is closer to 50/50. The other studies found a less pronounced leftward tilt, but leftward nonetheless. On election night 2000, one prominent News anchor unmistakably alternated between dejection, elation and finally openly wept as it was first reported Bush, then Gore, then Bush had won. The other anchors and talking-heads were less visibly partisan, yet the partisanship was palpable and mostly liberal.

Some distrust the media because it is too liberal, while others insist (against all evidence) that it is too conservative. You may not agree with that assessment of the media, but you can hardly object that is how others perceive the media given even the media realizes this bias has cost them credibility and are scrambling to distract us from it. Their reaction has been to deny it exists in the hope we’ll be convinced and, thereby, reestablish trust. I see this as a huge miscalculation that only compounds the suspicion against them. The way to reestablish trust is to return to honest reporting. Note I do not say they must return to ‘unbiased’ reporting to regain trust; just admit the bias, tone it down, and separate fact from feeling. I do agree with you that the real cause of print-media’s economic demise is the large array of alternate media (i.e., competition; especially the Internet and talk-radio), but creditability does play a role in audience fidelity too; and right now audience is fleeing the established media wholesale. More and more, people are registering this distrust of the old media in undeniable ways. We only see the tip of the iceberg, but, like the MSM, you want to believe only what can be seen above the waterline. I have to believe there is a very large mass below the waterline. Even more ominous for the media, however, is not the size of this mass either above or below, but its rate of expansion above.

I must also protest Pat’s characterization of the conservative ‘view’ of “… the news media, public education, Hollywood and the liberal controlled public policy think tanks…” as a “… tyranny of repetitive and myopic story lines that does an injustice to many readers.”

Is this ‘tyranny’ any greater than the liberal tyranny of a media dominance that makes it nigh impossible getting the conservative message out to a public distrustful of said media but lost as to where else to find information more to its liking? A message that says they need not fear the histrionics of the left driving them cattle-like into the maws of a micromanaging nanny-state? As shown, this view is no mere ‘plot-line’. It is the nature of our media to lean politically to a dominant view. The view that now prevails is the one nurtured on our campuses in the 1960s and 1970s, when radicalism was all the rage. The current top talking-heads and the editors of our major newspapers are all of that generation, orientation, education, and formed their opinions against that backdrop. You may argue you agree or disagree with that view of them, but can hardly dispute the media leans more one way than another. Journalists are men of letters (at least that is how they perceive themselves), and men-of-letters invariably and historically lean leftward. Newspapers have indulged in politics in this country and throughout Western Europe since the time of the American and French Revolution, reveling in the freedom to speak out against government or for causes. The news media, by its very nature, attracts those with an axe to grind and, overwhelmingly, that means those inclined to overhaul society. Does this not precisely describe our liberal nattering-nabobs? Horace Greely, the abolition crusading editor, is the model many journalists carry in their heads of who they are or aspire to become. How, then, is it a revelation the media is infested with such semi-radical reformers.
Further readings:

http://ajkeen.com/e.htm; http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2008/12/2009-the-end-of-print.html – says not democracy, but mobocracy/cacophony is the result of print’s demise; aka digital Babylon. Keen’s rage against ‘amateurism’ rings of some ‘truth’, but also reeks of an elitist Puritanism. His despair for the demise of culture is hardly new and the present corruption that he visualizes is partly an idealization of the past. The cacophony has always been with us, and brilliance has always vied with mediocrity for place; which, if anything, stimulates greater brilliance in the product. Shakespeare is recited 400-years after his death, while lesser playwrights of the era (of whom there were many) go unremembered. Thus, it is easy to believe the past more brilliant than it was if all you know or note are its luminaries, especially as we lump all past eras into a single, undifferentiated tableau. The reality is journalism has been partisan, dishonest, and sensationalist for as long as there have been journalists. Occasionally, it manages to rise above petty sensationalism and bias, to become briefly ‘professional’ in the sense of greater honesty. The ‘professionalism’ and ‘expertise’ Keen and the other apologists attribute to it is, thus, part real, but also part fantasy born of the need of ‘professionals’ to justify their special status as ‘guardians of speech’, their condescension of those they ‘educate’, and their expense accounts. The same can be said of literature, scholarship, philosophy, and art. Therefore, the pollution Keen deplores as a byproduct of print’s demise is a nonsense masking pollution that was always there. Anyone who has read Hamilton, Tocqueville, Charles Francis Adams, Burke, Voltaire, Rousseau, or Dana realizes both advocacy and corruption existed in spades. Likewise, the examples of great music and writing from the past he cites as proof of an uncrowded and ‘undemocratic brilliance’ were composed against a backdrop of competing voices, spin, and mediocrity little different from today. He is right the Internet cranks up the din, but also expands the reach of whatever brilliance exists within the mix. The great thing is we have some personal control over how much we listen to the din or tune it out to hear the truly brilliant.

As for the ‘guardians of speech’ and culture, I have to ask: who are they guarding speech from – from government or outsiders like us? Free-speech is not the sole preserve of ‘professionals’, it is a birthright we all have; something the liberal’s ‘Fairness Doctrine’ supposes will make less ‘raucous’. Too long, we have been drowned out by an indifferent media, often abetted by government. The Internet has given us back some small measure of that voice we once had when government and the media were relatively weak. How long this lasts before it too is tamed and ‘professionalized’ remains to be seen.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200901/new-york-times – End Times

http://www.geardiary.com/2008/03/06/the-email-roundtable-the-demise-of-print-media-and-a-possible-reason-for-the-amazon-kindle/ – techies discuss print’s demise

http://crosscut.com/2009/01/30/media/18815/ – “What needs saving isn’t newspapers … but journalism”; to which a responder adds: “…decentralization of information gathering and reporting will prove far more democratic…”

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4037 – lays out reasons behind 2004 Knight-Ridder divestments; News Vine scolding of Sherman (http://cdawson.new.newsvine.com/_news/2006/02/21/104139-the-end-of-print-media) – with its emphasis on saving jobs – as instigator has it backwards. We know consolidation and forced restructuring means the best survive while the mediocrities and ideologues (journalistic pretenders) are forced out, leaving us with a leaner, stronger, healthier, and less biased media; whereas he argues the opposite (i.e., protecting jobs preserves integrity).

Very true of course, but the real world isn’t that simple or that easily controlled by personal ideology. Among the Boomer generation, we can all wax nostalgic about the newspaper we read daily in those wonderful days of yesteryear. But we also forget that the Greatest Generation viewed television’s early attempts to capture viewers with their nightly news broadcasts as slightly subversive to our national culture – the “vast wasteland of television” where information was absorbed passively while staring at the “boob tube”. Change happens, we don’t have to like it, but ascribing vaguely sinister motives and outcomes to simple technological change reveals a childish state of mind.

The internet/electronic communication revolution is killing print media (and to an accelerating extent network televised news), not deliberately, but with an inexorable finality. The information offspring spawned by the development of the internet is a good thing for democracy. Certainly the names are silly: twitter, MySpace, email, text messaging, etc. but one must soberly consider the fact the mainstream media can no longer control our conversations on important issues, nor can the media control which issues we discuss, can no longer control how dissenting rebuttals are framed or who is allowed to rebut and to what length. How can this be a bad thing?

Any change brings disruption to the established order and always some downside. Obviously, there are idiots who provide no value to our national conversation through their contributions on the internet but that has often been the case and precedes the internet – the English have long provided a speakers’ corner in one of London’s parks where any twit or half-wit can publicly espouse whatever conspiracy theory they subscribe to – and at length.

But consider the personal advantage the internet provides as opposed to television or the newspapers. Information is now “real time”, stories break as they happen, there is no lag while a newspaper is printed or a talking head reviews the script. Information is readily available in a multitude of ways besides television or paper – many Americans learned of Michael Jackson’s death before and through other than the mainstream media. Maybe that wasn’t earth shattering news to many Americans but what about timely knowledge of a terrorist incident? Comparing a newspaper to the internet in terms of information dissemination is like comparing a horse drawn carriage to a sleek Mercedes-Benz sedan.

Best of all, there are now innumerable forums, blogs, analytical websites where citizens can exchange views outside the biased control of the mainstream media – the mainstream media’s Goliath has been brought down by the internet’s David. The fact that you’re reading one of those excellent forums on Intellectual Conservative bodes well for our country and the robustness of free discussion. So, tell us again, what exactly do we need newspapers for?

Newspapers will to continue to decline in readership and may phase completely out of existence within a generation. While one may argue that they’ve done it to themselves due to their continuing lack of credibility; there is another effect at work.

I was part of a generation that was taught to read at an early age by sitting on my Father’s lap at night and reading the paper to him. I could read before I went to kindergarten.

You say yourself that “Most young people don’t read newspapers.” This is, in my opinion, a product of public education. Information today is ‘force fed’ to students by their teachers, or quickly dredged from the internet. Study papers are no longer written, they are products of “cut-&-paste” sessions the night before the essay is due. Attention spans are minimal. Reading takes both time and commitment if one is going to properly glean the information out of an article.

Most kids today aren’t ready to consign this type of effort. Especially if the effort merely validates some point that a lifetime NEA member spent most of an hour ranting about in a classroom. As a result; newspapers in general and liberal newspapers specifically are being hoist on the dual petards of public education (read indoctrination) and their own bias.