GENERAL interest daily newspapers are making news these days, often by going out of business.
In the United States, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has stopped printing after almost 150 years. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News is gone. Smaller, local or regional papers face challenges.
This makes me sad. Having been a broadcaster and writer for about 30 years, it’s like seeing your neighbour have to sell his or her farm. Journalists write the rough draft of history, and with a degree in history, I worry about that potential loss of history.
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That same loss makes us less aware of what’s happening in the world and what could happen to us. It’s hard to make sound ethical judgements in an information vacuum.
What’s happening? The biggest problem is lack of money from advertising. It’s a case of how many eyeballs a paper can deliver to a potential advertiser, as opposed to what a magazine or television station can deliver.
As the economy tightens and trends shift, so do advertisers’ wallets. With less money, papers reduce staff and pages. Research is reduced, while governments and big corporations continue to massage their messages.
The quality of news can be dumbed down, as reporters are required to crank out stories like sausages from a sausage machine. The image is not far-fetched; in radio, we had a deadline every hour.
International events are omitted or buried. As ownership is concentrated, with fewer people owning more newspapers, radio and television stations, a kind of editorial group think sets in, so one paper looks like another.
Add the trend to make information entertaining and one wonders what one is getting and whether it is worth reading.
I fear the loss of good newspapers will leave us all less educated, more insulated and increasingly self-centred.
There are two rays of light in the gloom.
Instead of, or in addition to, print editions, some papers are producing on line editions, as does The Western Producer.
As people become more computer oriented, they can get more news through computers. Some publications are exclusively electronic, like B.C.’s The Tyee.
We’re returning to an ancient tradition. Long before print, there were troubadours and minstrels, poets, singers, performers. As they travelled, they would carry the news from one place to another.
They have been replaced by others, called bloggers, who fulfill the old story-telling function, sharing bits and pieces from here and there. Professional journalists also blog, giving a different flavour and context to their work.
Newspapers and journalism are in transition but there will always be stories to tell, and someone to tell them.
Rob Brown is a former agricultural writer and broadcaster now doing studies in ethics. He can be reached at moral.economy@sasktel.net.
