Put to bed for good
If you have been keeping tabs at all, in the last couple of weeks, two majors newspapers have shut down their operations, The Rocky Mountain News out in Colorado and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Like many institutions, the newspaper industry has hit a very rough path with the economy, along with competing for many years now with digital sources that operate freely and more quickly, and in light of both, decreasing advertising sales. Since the bulk of a newspaper’s operational expenses depend upon advertising, it’s not too surprising that when advertisers move, newspapers are in a tough spot.
That said, the loss of the newspaper is a sad day for all. Whether you do or don’t read the print copy of a newspaper, it’s a huge part of our cultural heritage, particularly in the United States. Sure, newsprint is made from the scum of the scum paper, prone to crumbing and decomposition, a little help from a preservationist and smart archival practices keep them good and strong.
The print paper is of such value to our cultural history that the NEH and the Library of Congress have devoted thousands and thousands of dollars into the National Newspaper Digitization Project, with the hopes of digitizing many of the newspapers that bloomed in America’s younger years. During my graduate study, I was fortunate enough to be working on this grand-funded project — my job involved researching a selection of Texas newspapers, the towns and people who founded them, and the significant historical events occurring at that time. I spent countless hours digging through microfilmed papers, learning about the characters behind them, and really learning about who and what many of these towns were in their seminal years. Beyond the history, it was enjoyable to peruse the advertisements, the anecdotes, the serialized novels, the advice, and the classifieds; rather than simply the news giving a sense of history, these sorts of things really delineate the culture and interests of the community. The project to put these newspapers online is wonderful, as few repositories hold such vast collections as the one in which I worked, and even those libraries and repositories that DO hold these historical newspapers have either the funds or the equipment to make them readily available for public and egalitarian consumption.
Of course, not to be out done by such stronghold institutions like NEH and the LoC, Google also signed on to begin digitizing newspapers. I think it’s yet to be entirely hashed out or completed, so, we’ll see what happens with that project.
With the death of the print newspaper, we will no longer have to worry about projects down the line — these papers will either be entirely gone or will have taken the model that the Seattle P-I has with going online only.
But what happens when a paper goes online only?
The earth gets greener, content can be rolled out more quickly, advertisers are more willing to pay for their inches, it’s an interactive forum for readers, and, it can be accessed through a variety of mediums (beyond a desktop computer) at any time and often freely. The old paper model requires a lot of paper, ink, and machinery to be printed, it is usually printed the night before it is rolled out thus making some stories less than current, it’s static beyond the editorial pages, and advertising budgets are, well, fairly depleated. Likewise, with subscription numbers dwindling and the price of things like paper and ink becoming more expensive, subscribing can be a bit of an investment.
But what else happens?
The digital divide widens.
Newspapers held a place in our culture as moderately authoritative sources. As much as people suggest bias — and I don’t disagree — the newspaper is entrusted by us to investigate leads, hound sources, and write the package in as much a useful, user-centered manner as possible. People who work on newspapers are usually trained in the skills to interview people and to write (though debatably so, sometimes). Through America’s history, the newspaper was what allowed the community to connect and learn about issues impacting their community by people who make their (meager) living by finding out as much information as possible and digesting it for readers.
Reading the newspaper was a public and private activity. People on the plane, on the train, in the coffee shop, or in their own house would read or share the print paper and talk with one another about the stories. I remember when I worked in my community library through high school and people came in every morning and throughout the day to read the day’s paper. And, like the 80-year-old in the story linked above suggests, it was part of the morning routine, just like taking in that first cup of coffee. And now coffee’s companion will come in the form of something online.
How this impacts the digital divide — newspapers are more of a privilege now. No longer are people going to happen upon their local newspaper in a public space nor will they find the latest copy in their libraries or new stands. Sure, they can get the newspaper online, but if they don’t have a computer at home or they are out and about and don’t happen to have a laptop, iphone, kindle or other portable device at their hand, they’re further removed from an authoritative news source. They are further removed from their community, unable to connect simply because they do not have the means to connect.
While I’m aware that a newspaper can’t survive on love and hope alone, I wonder quite seriously how this issue can be resolved by the newspapers [who have an interest in getting the news out to everyone] and libraries [who have an interest in providing knowledge and information to all]. We further marginalize those who are older and not technology savvy, as well as those who are unable to access technology.
I wonder, too, how we can archive and preserve our cultural history. Since everything is digital and there are people who specialize in archiving born-digital material, the important work of holding onto the information will be handled well. But it lacks something that a printed paper has. Moreover, as technology changes, these digital archives face more and more challenges, much in the same way that the move to microfilm newspapers has caused challenges to access — libraries and repositories have to buck up and pay for expensive equipment that people are inexperienced with or are intimidated by, and people on staff must maintain a level of knowledge of technology that grows increasingly outdated.
I think we’re facing a really tough challenge here. It’s very sad to see these newspapers close their print operations, regardless of how much one understands the situations or how much one finds the print mode entirely outdated. People without technology access and/or skills continue to be pushed to the periphery and it poses serious challenges and difficulties for our social and cultural history. We’re living now in a time of change and challenge, and it’s essential we not only overcome these things now, but we plan and anticipate the future needs and difficulties, while keeping in mind that technology is a privilege and not a right. We should not forget that people without privilege DO have an equal right to knowledge and information as those of us with it.
