Extra! Extra! Don’t Read All About It
I recently bought a newspaper. You know, those things made from trees with ink all over them. It was the first time I had bought an actual printed newspaper in a year and a half! A year and a half! Which brings me to the point of this article. I have an embarrassing confession to make.
I started my journalism career as a newspaper reporter. I was like one of those reporters you see in old movies… running to meet deadline, scrambling to write a 12 column inch piece and although I never yelled “stop the presses,” I did often run down to see the presses run. And now I couldn’t even be bothered to buy one.
In 1671, Governor William Berkeley of Virginia wrote: “I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years, for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both.”
Boston’s Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, was published by Benjamin Harris in 1690. The authorities, in “high Resentment” that Harris dared to report that English military forces had allied themselves with “miserable” savages, put him out of business four days later.
The birth date of the American newspaper can probably, and rightfully, be said to have come in 1704. It also started in Boston. It was The Boston News Letter founded by postmaster John Campbell. (Many of America’s first newspapers were started by postmasters.) It lasted 72 years. Boston has continued that newspaper tradition. It is one of the few major cities in America with two newspapers.
It could be argued that the death notice for the American newspaper was posted in 2008. That was when the Internet officially overtook newspapers as people’s source for national and international news, according to research by the Pew Research Center’s People and the Press. Newspapers have been on life support ever since. (Ttelevision still retained the lead position as the source for national and international news.)
There is an old saying in the newspaper business that the devoted newspaper person has “ink in their blood.” At one time I would have thought that described me. The fact though is that I have worked as a television journalist for a much longer time than as a newspaper one. Still I feel guilty not supporting my first cherished journalism memory. It is of no consolation that I am not alone in this abandonment of the printed word. The loss is pretty astounding with newspaper circulation dropping from 122 Million in 2004 to 73 Million now. In that same period 1,800 newspapers have gone under and stopped printing. The result, according to the University of North Carolina’s School of Media and Journalism, is that large parts of America have become “news deserts.”
Not too surprisingly, the areas most affected are the small and rural communities. These are the same areas that are losing hospitals, and with them, medical support. Needless to say the medical crisis is more critical than the information crisis, but they are both crises. I would argue that, in a way, they have a common thread — the loss of community. With hospitals it’s community support. With newspapers it’s community connectedness.
That need for “connectedness” is what is keeping local television stations going strong in the face of the Internet news behemoth. The key reason is a magic word — LOCAL. Nine out of ten people questioned by the Pew Research Center says TV stations are their primary source of local news, and it’s on the actual TV set, not through the stations’ website. There are concerns though. Those same people complain that coverage is often ‘semi-local’, meaning in their area but not necessarily in their actual local community.
The report also has some advice, based on this research, for television reporters. Actually it applies to all reporters. Four out of the five adults surveyed say it is important that journalists understand the community history (85%) and that they are ‘personally engaged’ with the local community (81%). And with that advice comes some rewards
“Community residents who see their local journalists as connected to the area give their local news media far higher ratings than those who do not.”
A wiser man than me gave me some advice about maintaining that ‘connectedness.’ He called it the 3R’s.
— You must REFLECT your community by, in effect, acting as a mirror of it.
— You must RESPECT your community by showing and enabling its diversity.
— You must RESPOND to your community by identifying its issues and needs.
You follow those three rules and you will be rewarded with the fourth “R” so important to television — Ratings.
I should note that, of course, I do follow the news fairly closely. It is through various news websites as well as various newsletters and social media sources. That, too, is in keeping with what more and more Americans are doing.
Finally, one last embarrassing confession. That newspaper I bought? That first newspaper in a year and a half? Never opened it. Never read it. Just never quite got around to it. So, now, it is sitting along with two other pieces of memorabilia on a shelf in my office, acting as another kind of historic reminder, albeit a more personal one, of a time when ink ran in my blood.
