Mourning The Passing Of Print
Sunday morning is special. It is sleeping in. It is the smell of fresh ground coffee. It is robes and slippers. Mostly, it is my wife and I together, with the Sunday paper; worrying about troubling news, discussing the opinions, and laughing over the funnies. My darling and I have passed countless Sunday mornings this way, in playful competition for the fun sections and in somber conversation about the news. I worry, now, that we may be nearing the end of those shared moments; those beautiful mornings.
Newspapers are in trouble. In one six month period last year, circulation fell more than two and a half percent. The largest media groups are almost all hemorrhaging cash. The Rocky Mountain News, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Tucson Citizen all recently closed, or are near to it. And the papers that aren’t closing are trimming back, way back; firing staff, combining sections, and cutting pages. The situation is grim enough that a great many industry analysts are preparing the newspapers obituary. There are a few who cheer the print media’s woes. Not me. Even though I am heavily vested in the “new media,” I think the demise of print would be too bad; and for reasons other than what it will mean to the way my wife and I enjoy a Sunday morning. I worry that it’s bad for the country.
You see, up until recently the newspaper was where folks who cared about current events got their information. They relied on the paper to get the story and get it right; and present it in an even-handed way. Even when folks argued about what the news meant, they agreed, in a fundamental way, on what the news was. The news was a shared set of “facts.” People on opposite sides of the political fence spoke a common language, and could, at least, talk to each other. No longer. Now, folks who are interested in current events and government get their news from the web. And they get it from sites that are partisan. These sites have a point of view and slant their reporting. So, when we debate with one another, we use information provided by the websites that reflect our bias.
The problem is, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, believes the other guy. I don’t trust the sources used by people who disagree with me, and I know they don’t trust mine. And that’s bad. How can we debate if we can’t even agree on what are the “facts.” How can we debate if we think the other guy isn’t telling the truth; or, at least, isn’t basing his arguments on the truth. It’s gotten to the point where both sides have websites devoted, entirely, to pointing out how what the other guy calls “fact” is flat wrong…how his sources are stretching the truth, leaving out important factors, or downright lying. It wasn’t always that way. I’m old enough to know. There was a time when most of us had a common understanding of what was fact; even when we had a very different interpretation of what those facts meant. The daily newspaper, and monthly news magazine, was our source.
If newspapers can’t recover their former glory, we are all going to miss that common language of debate. And I’m going to miss those wonderful, playful, serious, loving Sunday mornings. It’s very hard to bond over a computer screen. But, I suppose my sweetheart and I will have to find a way.
