If newspaper is truly ”doomed,” what have we got to replace it?
On April 14, The Spokesman-Review carried a story about a journalism conference in Pullman. In it Steve Smith, the S-R’s editor, says the newspaper is “thoroughly and utterly doomed.”
I am reminded of the old refrain, “Say it ain’t so, Joe, say it ain’t so.”
I am of the generation that grew up on the newspaper, but I have other reasons for feeling as I do.
My father, who published a weekly newspaper in a small town in Ohio, taught me to read when I was 3 by sitting me on his lap and reading the newspaper to me, following the words with a finger. That was the Louisville Courier-Journal, a paper that always seemed to garner more than its share of journalism awards. In later years I subscribed to the Washington Post, the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune, all great newspapers.
The S-R may not be a Courier-Journal, but it does pretty well. Better than a lot I’ve read. The editorial opinion is mostly confined to the editorial pages, and the selection of editorial columnists spans from Molly Ivins to Thomas Sowell. You can’t get much more of the spectrum than that. And it has a good balance of local and national news. Now about those comics …
What is going to replace the newspaper? TV news? You gotta’ be kidding!
Conservatives have been lambasting the Public Broadcast System for years about its liberal bias. And Fox News is so unabashadly conservative that the liberals call it “Fox Spews.” CNN Headline News is more about entertainment than news. They recently covered two car chases for an extended period of time, ignoring all the other news.
And what TV has done to politics! The infamous sound bite. The candidates chosen for their charisma on the tube to the exclusion of all else. The rush to register anyone who’s breathing because the less informed the voters, the easier they are to influence with attack ads. Politics has always been a dirty business, but TV has brought us a plethora of mass media marketing experts turning their shady talents to pushing a candidate.
The Internet? It makes TV look good. You can find any opinion, any trumped up facts, any self-styled expert you want to agree with your preconceptions. And I’m talking thousands of Web sites, if not millions. I may use the Internet for e-mail and Usenet for shopping and finding hobby info, but I’ll get my news elsewhere.
So please, Mr. Smith, consider changing your opinion. Spokanites would be much poorer without the S-R. If 39 percent of the 18- to 34-year-olds still read a newspaper after growing up on the Web, as reported in another story, there’s hope. Maybe we older folks need to push it to our children and grandchildren. Maybe the schools need to do more to increase students’ awareness of the invaluable functions a newspaper performs.
Long live the newspaper!