Why newspapers are important

The olden days

Up until three or four decades ago, newspapers were not only vitally important to society, but they were also often sought. Until the late 1960s, newspapers had little competition other than radio when it came to delivering the news to the masses. Newspapers ruled. Then television came along with Walter Cronkite and the Vietnam War. Things began to change.

Over the next 20 to 30 years, newspapers were still pretty strong. Television news truly didn't come into its own until the 1980s and really didn't begin to grow in strength until cable news and CNN began to grow in the early 1990s. About the same time, the Internet sprang to life.

Newspapers cling to life, barely

Since the early 1990s, newspapers have grown less and less useful, less and less powerful as containers of knowledge and less and less needed by the common folk. The death of newspapers has until recent begin gradual. A little circulation drop here. A little advertising dropped there. But over the last couple of years, things have dropped off dramatically for newspapers.

Television has had some affect, but more than anything it has been the Internet that has hit newspapers hard. Information is now readily available, often for free, all over the world at just a few clicks of a mouse. Newspapers can't compete with that. The news in newspapers is almost always at least 12 hours old, and often times older.

The readership and the advertising base for newspapers has slowly been eroded over the years, and it continues to do so. Most importantly, of the last couple of years, corporations that own newspapers have realized they are driving a sinking ship and have been selling off newspapers and cutting staff as fast as possible. It's only business, after all, right?

Also, the media in general has taken hard hits over the last couple of decades of being biased. There is some truth to this. Newspapers are put together by people, and as much as they try not to, people often can't help their own biases. Also, with the growing polarity of politics (especially in the United States), the word "unbiased" has lost much of its meaning, now mainly meaning "whatever I don't agree with."

What's to come?

I don't know. No one does. But as a former newspaper journalist for 20 years, I can make some educated guesses. I believe newspapers will survive, in some form or another, for at least another 50 or so years. More newspapers will shut down, and many newspapers will continue to merge print and Web products with some eventually going completely to the Web. Many of the larger newspapers will survive by jumping on the Internet bandwagon, and possibly by expanding and becoming more regional. Smaller newspapers will possibly survive by focusing more on advertising, by cutting back on news content and basically becoming an advertising vehicle similar to the many automobile and classifieds-type publications that can often be found in racks at the entrance to grocery and department stores.

Why is this bad?

Some could argue that the death of newspapers is no big deal. It's just a natural technological and business trend. Again, this is true to some extent.

Some newspaper editors and publishers will argue that newspapers must not be allowed to die because newspapers are vital to their communities, that newspapers help build a sense of community. Frankly, that's a bunch of bull and just public relations. These people are covering for their own jobs, not that that's not understandable. Once upon a time, newspapers were barometers for their communities, but those days are long gone with the advent of the World Wide Web. Community is everywhere now, not just one particular place (with some exceptions, mostly in remote areas and/or very small towns).

Many of the features once provided by newspapers are now being covered faster and more conveniently by other media, mainly through the Internet. But there is still one very important task that newspapers used to do regularly, something that should be important to society at large.

Coverage

I'm not just talking about those long, 10-piece series articles with lots of photographs that newspapers love so much and often for which they win awards. Some of those are nice. Some of them are boring. But that's not what I'm specifically talking about here.

I'm talking about newspapers spending the time, money and other resources to fully cover and investigate the stories that need to be covered, such as stories about corruption, war, injustices, etc.

Sure, television does this to some extent. But you only get a whole 60 seconds of coverage. Then they're off to the next story about a cute puppy or something (not that I have anything against puppies ... I'm a dog lover myself).

Sure, the Internet provides news for free from all over the world. But much of that is written or photographed by people who are not only inexperienced, but who often have an agenda of their own.

But even taking television and the Internet into consideration, the two of those combined do not have (or will not spend) the proper resources needed for complete, proper coverage of major news stories.

One could argue that newspapers also no longer spend those resources. But I'd argue back that it's only because newspapers no longer have the resources, in finances or people, to do their job properly all the time. Believe me, if newspapers still had those resources, they would still be doing the job.

Just an example

About 20 years ago, I started my first newspapers job at a small daily in southern Ohio. Circulation was something like 16,000 in a town of about 21,000 people. At this tiny little newspaper, we sent a photographer off to cover the Gulf War, to keep in touch with troops from our region. The newspaper paid for everything. Travel expenses, hotel rooms, etc. It was all covered.

That would never happen today.

A couple of years ago, I was working for a larger newspaper with a circulation of about 150,000 in a city of about 300,000 people. There was another war in Iraq going on. The newspaper sent a reporter. But this time this much larger newspaper could not afford to pay all the reporter's expenses. The newspaper did pay some, but grants were also sought, and the reporter had to chip in herself.

In closing

Despite what many of us who were in the industry might wish, I don't believe newspapers will be missed. The public no longer needs newspapers for the most part, so there is nothing for them to miss.

That being said, I believe the public is missing out on the true importance of what newspapers used to accomplish. I'm sorry, but your local TV station isn't going to send a reporter to a war to get indepth coverage of what's going on there, and that local blogger you like to check out a couple of times a week can't afford to do such. And even if an Internet or TV news source did send someone to cover something important, they're not going to take the time or utilize their resources to report earnestly. It's not in their blood. It's not how they're made. It's not how those "systems" work. They are fine for what they are, but the days of real news gathering are going, possibly forever.