You'll Miss The Newspapers When They're Gone

[davidschroth]

That's the headline on an article in one of the local wanna-be newspaper replacements, MinnPost.

The author is both right and wrong - I *do* miss the newspapers, but they've been gone a long time. And I didn't leave the newspapers, the newspapers left me.

Given my druthers, I prefer holding the daily fishwrap in my hands to dealing with inevitably clunky online interfaces that get in the way of my reading. It's a habit, I suppose - a habit of very long standing. I started reading the newspaper - every day - shortly after I learned to read. Which puts it in the late 50s. And once I started reading newspapers, I continued the habit. Somewhere along the way, I picked up the habit of reading new magazines as well.

But eventually, something changed. Probably in the 90s, although I'm sure I can't fix the date very well. It started with the news magazines - they stopped focusing on news. As time went on, they had more and more filler, and less news. Eventually, I stopped reading them - first Newsweek, and then Time.

But the newspaper was still good. For a while, anyway. But then whatever it was that infected the news magazines infected the local newspaper, as well. It went from pretty good to dreck. Same symptoms - more filler, less news. And at the same time the newspaper seemed to be giving up on news, I found that one could actually get news - online - and usually several weeks before the Main Stream Media bothered to report it.

So yeah, I miss the newspapers now that they're gone. But they've been gone for years now. And I didn't leave the newspapers - they left me.

Comments

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup. We appear to have followed parallel paths, or perhaps the same one. I'm not sure just when I stopped reading various newspapers & news magazines -- some were dropped one-by-one, some when I came back to them after several years of fafia. (The Real Shock, at that time, was picking up a copy of Scientific American and discovering that it contained several articles that told me less (rather than the more to which I had been accustomed) than I really wanted to know about those topics.) *sigh*

This is, I think, a Serious Thing, well beyond being merely a matter of my pleasure. Assuming (as I do) that the wise governance of a Democracy depends upon a well-informed Citizenry, this movement towards a status in which (practically) the only people who can be well-informed are those who both make a considerable effort in this _and_ have skillful access to the InterNet. The percentage of American Voters who fit both criteria is probably smaller than most of us realize. The rest of the citizens will have their perceptions shaped by a handful of mass-media conglomerates that are skillful at emotional manipulation.

Not that there's anything new about the latter (I lived in California towards the end of the Hearst Newspaper Dynasty hayday), but it seems to be becoming even more pervasive, and there's even less effective competition. And, as far as I can figure out, the various InterNet News Sources don't have anything like the resources that major newspapers and magazines used to apply to investigative reporting. The scene is set for an Orwellian situation.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

The article Larry links to is informative. The Clay Shirky piece.

K.

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer. I'm pretty sure I'd already read the article by the time Larry linked to it, but I'll go back & make sure.