On News and Newspapers

March 6, 2009

"All the news that's fit to print." --Masthead logo of the The New York Times

Last week, the final issue of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver was printed. Its demise was but the latest boulder in an avalanche of announcements of bad news for the media, and it hit me harder than most. The News, and its rival, the Denver Post, were strong influences in Thermopolis, Wyoming, where my father was co-publisher of the weekly newspaper in that tiny high desert town in the late 1940s. Those papers were read daily throughout the western states. Their reporting and editorial coverage offered a sense of common regional identity that stretched well beyond the borders of the sparsely populated mountain states, and their stories let us know we were part of a larger world.

In those days, while our local weekly reported births, deaths, traffic accidents and high school basketball, the major events--like the Great Blizzard of 1948 and the end of World War II--were covered by the big Denver newspapers in banner headlines. And, while we could hear news headlines from our local radio station, and could see dramatic world events captured on film in the weekly newsreels at the local movie house, the big regional newspapers were the most important sources of news about what was happening in the wider world. They could be read quickly or leisurely, set aside to be read later, discussed around the dinner table, clipped out or saved to start the logs in the fireplace.

Half a century later, newspapers are no longer the main source of vital information. In fact, fewer and fewer people subscribe to or read any newspaper, choosing instead to listen to talk radio, watch the "Colbert Report" on the Comedy Channel, or grab headlines from the internet, if they tune in at all. When the so-called national newspaper, USA Today, was introduced, its news-lite coverage emulated the minimization television had already imposed on its evening news by classifying it as "entertainment" and shrinking its coverage-- thus downgrading the value of news as a commodity in its own right.

The competition for the attention of the reader/viewer/listener and for the advertisers who want their business has gotten steadily tougher as technological developments continue to emerge. The newspapers have been hit especially hard, because so many people prefer to read headlines and get instant news on the internet or from a podcast. Most newspapers have been forced to put out on-line editions, just to maintain connection with their readers. Attempts to charge to download an article are resisted. It is a rare daily newspaper that realizes any meaningful revenue from a web site. Even the venerable New York Times abandoned its "premium" features that were supposed to be revenue producers. In short, newspapers are treading water in a rapidly rising pool filled with readers who are used to getting information free, and so far there is no practical business model that assures survival. The iPhone, the Blackberry, the emerging Kindle and other portable page-reading devices makes survival even more dicey for traditional newspapers.

The swiftly evolving transition to new technologies has combined with the uncertainties of a sucking economy to sweep newspapers and other media away in the tide of downsizings and shutdowns. This has forced newsgathering, feature columns and editorial staffs to be shrunk, consolidated or done away with. International news coverage is expensive and many news bureaus have been closed. It is no longer a question of whether local crimes or city council meetings or state legislatures are adequately covered, because they are not. Given the extraordinary lengths that the secretive Bush administration went to in its efforts to avoid disclosure of acts that stretched the law to the breaking point, this paucity of coverage comes at a time when even more light needs to be shed in the quiet corners of government.

The negative implications are stark on several levels. Every healthy democratic society depends on the unlimited availability of information on the public's business, and the media--especially the print media--have historically served that niche. We have counted on the newspapers to look closer, to dig deeper and expose to the light the tawdry behaviors, the ill-gotten gains, the conspiratorial behaviors and the overweening politicians. Electronic media, especially television, are hit-and-run--the snatchers of sound bites--but they are rationed in time and choose a 10-second voice-over with a dramatic picture over an in-depth interview that explains an issue until the viewers can understand. When I was a public servant, it was not uncommon for a TV reporter to send a cameraman out to shoot film and then call me to explain what was shot. At the same time, the local daily newspaper sent a reporter, who covered the entire meeting. Today, too little of what they call news is dug out of the dark mine by professional journalists--it is skimmed from the top and dispensed in frothy foam by news readers (as they are honestly labeled by the BBC).

It is no wonder that we worry about Americans' short attention spans, and our tendency to reduce issues to slogans. Few people take the time to exchange views objectively, and to actually calmly debate a question with opposing facts and perspectives. The past several elections have been dominated by sloganeering and media assaults on our sensibilities, dividing us into reds, blues, conservatives and liberals, bleeding hearts and right wingnuts, inevitably turning our eardrums to leather and our ability to analyze an issue into a puddle of Jell-o.

There once was a time when people read a newspaper as the primary source for news and opinion. The news carried the facts and the opinion was signed by a columnist or appeared somewhere in the editorial pages as the paper's position or as an op-ed essay or letter. Nowadays, more and more people choose the TV or radio or log onto the internet for what may be described as news, but which, more often than not, is either fluffy, non-substantive soft news or a shouting match between ego-driven opinionators picked for the interests they represent and not for their knowledge or intellect. For the citizen interested in being well-informed, the choices are limited.

It is frustrating to bemoan these trends and have no magic formula to fix the problem. The pace of evolving technology, often our friend, is outstripping our ability to keep up with ourselves. For newspaper readers, the consequences are troubling. There is no substitute for reading a newspaper, and I dread the day my "news" will shine from the screen of a hand-held electronic device that I can neither clip from, discipline the dog with nor wrap fish in.

Charlie Crow © March 6, 2009