Gloom and Doom

I am getting very tired of all the doomsayers. Newspapers are dying. Life as we know it is going to end. Good grief. Can they be any more annoying?
Instead of insisting that kids don't read anything, maybe they should stop by a library or a bookstore and see what kids are reading. Instead of lamenting that all information will be electronically transmitted, why don't they check out a real book? Or buy one?
If these folks who see the end of the printed world spent more time reading printed material and less time kvetching about it, maybe the printed word would last longer.
So, I'll cut this short and let the kvetchers get on with real reading.

Happiness is a warm gun

One of the reasons John Lennon's "Happiness is a Warm Gun" works is the juxtaposition against Charles Schultz's "Happiness is a warm puppy." The other reasons is that we are a gun-crazy culture, but I'll deal with that in a later blog. Puppies are soft and cuddly and always warm. Guns are only warm when they have recently been fired. Sort of like the difference between a book and a Kindle. Amazon recently introduced a new, updated version of the kindle, but it's still solid and hard and you can't cuddle up to it. Even if reading from a screen doesn't give you an Excedrin headache, it seems awkward. You can hold a book in a wing chair, curled up on a corner of a couch, on the beach. Books are made to be comfortable with. I can't see someone comfortable with a kindle. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think it will be a long time before books printed on dead trees are totally replaced by books on a kindle. Because happiness is warm and cuddly.

Typhoid Perry

So here at the Daily Planet, Editor Perry White (picture the late Lane Smith in the Lois and Clark TV series) assigns the medical desk to research the possible impending pandemic.
Of course, we don't know how serious this swine flu is going to be. So far, it looks like the precautions are a little over-the-top, but I'm not sure I want to get on an airplane right now.
That's the thing, really, when it comes down to our own safety and that of the people we love, we are willing to look a little silly in the name of safety. When we see other people doing it on the television news, we snicker. Human nature.
Is the press exaggerating the epidemic? Quite possibly. There is a certain adreniline rush that comes with a story like this. Does that sound maudlin? Of course it does. Nobody is surprised when the press is callous and unfeeling, cares more about the story than the people injured. But there is a difference between getting a jolt about a story and making the story bigger than it is. Today, there are too many news outlets tripping over each other to tell the story.

If it's Tuesday, we must be in. . . .

In much of the world, publishers need a license to publish.
Think about that.
A license.
One of the laws the Framers discarded when they wrote our amazing Constitution was the one that licensed publishers. They understood the necessity for free speech and a free press, which means, they appreciated dissent.
Of course, it was a little easier for them to appreciate dissent, since they were professional dissenters themselves.
A country formed from a revolution may belikely to be a little more free, but that doesn't give us the right to be complacent about it.
Free speech is the right from which all other rights are derived.
If that matters as much as it should and, especially, if you teach others for whom it should matter, read Charles Glasser Jr.'s International Media Law. The book describes the variations of law in many countries of the world, but the bottom line is, this is the best place to be a member of the press.
Even now.

A Modest Proposal

Newspapers are folding in random cities around the country. While this may or may not signal the death of American newspapers, there is something newspapers can do to help themselves. Of course, it would require working together, which is not something newspapers do well. Since only large sites like Google and the Huffington Post actually sell ads to support the editorial content, why don't newspapers pull their copy from the Web and just continue to publish on dead trees with advertising to pay for it. Many papers would still be in trouble, but they wouldn't be competing against themselves. I don't know anybody who has actually clicked on an ad on the Internet. I'm not naive enough to expect to make money from this blog. Newspaper publishers should stop fantasizing about making money from Internet advertising and tell their readers, "party is over, if you want to read it, buy it, just like in the old days."

The Seattle Post-Intellegencer is no longer a physical newspaper. It exists only in cyberspace. Sort of like this blog. Hearst is on the verge of doing in other papers in the chain, too.
Papers have been dying for many years. New York City once had 14 major dailies. Not all of these papers were great, or even good, but they provided competition for each other. Every good size city used to have at least two daily newspapers. Two opinion pages. Often two political viewpoints.The fewer newspapers, the fewer viewpoints.
It could be argued that a paper on line can offer viewpoints, too, but it's less likely. On line advertising is yet to prove profitable, so publishers are likely to be beholden to the few advertisers they get. There are plenty of cowardly publishers around anyway. Until and unelss online advertising proves profitable, the limited number of businesses who do advertise will have disproportionate power.

Mark Twain's Obituary

When a premature announcement of his demise was published, author Mark Twain remarked, "rumors of my death are premature."
The same could be said today about the death of print. The New Yorker said the last daily newspaper will smack the last sidewalk in May of 2043. They may be correct and if they are, it will be that flagship of the Newhouse chain, the Staten Island Advance. Since the "major" New York dailies ignore the "forgotten borough," (the News and the Post only report when body parts -- not an entire body -- are found at Fresh Kills and the venerable Grey Lady never mentions Richmond County unless it has the chance to make fun of Wagner College) the Advance has become, by default, the best newspaper in America, if you define that as a newspaper you HAVE to read.
But dailies are not the only print medium. Weeklies are strong, at least some of them, even in this recession. And they will continue to be strong if they don't forget the simple truth that made them strong in the first place: they provide context.
If weeklies forget this and imitate their daily brethren with ultra-short stories; if they start to care more about the glitz than the words, they will go the way of the weeklies. But, if they provide their readers with the information they need to be informed voters and citizens, they will survive.
People still read stories of length and substance. Look at Time and Newsweek. And if they will read and digest those stories, they will do the same with stories that impact their lives on a local level.
Readers of weeklies should rise up against the implied insult that they are too shallow to take time to learn about their community.