|
|
 |
|
He's a witness to the death
of the newspaper business
TheColumnists.com
I’ve always had a curious fascination with newspapers. I don’t know where it came from. Neither of my parents were newspaper readers, or readers of much else.
Maybe it came from being a child during the final days of World War II. The newspapers were so exciting then, with all the news of the war, the maps showing Allied movements or Nazi movements, the speeches of FDR. You just had to read a newspaper then, even as a child.
I remember I was so fascinated with newspapers that the corner news-hawker let me assist him by holding a few copies of the paper and occasionally saying “Read all about it.” That was a dynamic phrase.
And so it was that I headed into journalism as soon as I could. I was the editor of my high school paper, the Glenville Torch. That earned me lots of attention from the girls in the class, though, of course, the athletes got adoration along with attention.
On to college and making to the post of editorial director of the Michigan Daily. (Athletes did particularly well there.)
I spent my career in newspapers, beginning at the Cleveland Press and moving to such places as Newsday and the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the Boston Herald American and the Cleveland Plain Dealer and finally the San Jose Mercury News. The Press is dead now and all the others are, in my opinion, dying, or at least coughing a lot. It is very sad to be seeing such suffering.
The cause for this lamentable situation is very clear to see. All the papers are owned by large chains, corporate enterprises that have more properties than they can possibly oversee. Oh, they can examine the books regularly and find, as they have lately, that circulation and profits are way down. These days there is hardly a newspaper that is not losing circulation and, as goes hand-in-hand, advertising. The newspapers are also rapidly losing staff, often forced out by cutbacks or leaving for better types of careers.
A major reason for the decline, of course, is the advent of the Internet. How can newspapers compete with the immediacy of the web? And classified advertising, the most lucrative source of income, has been shrinking along with all the rest. There are countless websites that specialize in personal ads, cheap or free.
Newspaper circulation is mostly made up
of home-delivered copies, which require newspaper carriers. That’s
expensive. The news, when it arrives, is hours old. The Internet
gets to you fresh.
But there are other reasons, too. At the San Jose Mercury, the
staff now covers primarily local stories, getting the rest off
the wires or syndicates. The paper thereby loses an identity
and with that its connection to readers. The personality of the
newspaper was always a magnet for readers who got to know writers,
columnists, editorialists, etc. Those people are rare now and
come and go quickly. The paper becomes a stranger in the home.
And the staffers become indifferent as their salaries and benefits fail to keep up with other careers. At the Mercury, the basic salaries have long since made the buying of homes in this affluent, high-priced market, unaffordable. That kind of mood does not improve the product.
Some editors try to fight back against the chain, but it is a losing battle. Jay Harris, publisher of the Mercury, quit the paper due to cutbacks. Recently, the Los Angeles Times lost both a distinguished publisher and editor for the same reason. And it has happened at the Philadelphia Inquirer and numerous other once-distinguished newspapers. That, too, does not encourage readership.
Will newspapers by-and-large disappear? Maybe not, but they are becoming something less. In my early newspaper years, most cities had more than one newspaper and the competition was good for the readers. Now, the Bay Area of California finds itself with a single owner of a group of papers, borrowing staff members from one to write the news at another. We seem to be approaching a day when many cities do not have their own paper, relying on such national journals as USA Today, which, of course, cannot replace local journalism.
So, here I am, after a lifetime of ink-stained hands and the joy of being a voice in various communities, watching my friends at the papers slowly trekking out of the business, pensions cut, struggling to pick up their health care premiums. Newspapers were always a business but now that is an ominous term. The good papers were more than businesses, more than bottom-line enterprises.
I’m afraid that my personal history is of a time long past. I still get three papers in the morning, but I am letting two of them lapse. I guess I still need the New York Times, though I often read it online before the paper is delivered. Online still can’t replace the product in my hands, but my offspring are happier with the click click news that they can roam, picking and choosing the subjects they prefer.
I guess this is a story that ought to appear on the obituary page, which, I think, is still an area of local news the web can’t touch. But that’s today. Tomorrow, I fear, it is the newspaper that I won’t be able to touch.
We used to put the number “30” on the bottom of a story to indicate its conclusion. Which is what, I guess, is the title of this piece.
©2006 by Murry Frymer. The Murry Frymer caricature is ©2000 by Jim Hummel. The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Nov. 13, 2006.
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Murry Frymer. To send an email, click
here and don't forget to mention Murry's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|