Archive for March 13th, 2009

Making the rounds of the blogosphere is a report that places 8 of the nation’s top 50 newspapers in danger of going under. One of these is our own Star-Telegram.

I think the problem is an evolving citizen attitude of what is important. My mother still subscribes, and is frightened by the concept of a town without a paper and a citizenry that doesn’t read one, and thinks similarly to one of my profs. in the teacher credentialing program, who told us accusingly, “your generation doesn’t read the newspaper.”

I guess I’m a bit put off by the level of trust some in the over-60 population have in the newspaper. I suspect that once it was the best source of information, when the alternative was going over the back fence and hearing gossip from next door, but the increased and expanding sources of information on the internet have a way of undercutting the claims the newspaper has always made of non-bias. It’s as if, in the past, the newspaper was the most unbiased news source, but now the internet is that. And this, not the price of paper, may be what is cutting their market off at the knees.

I will also add just one more thing that i perhaps more scary for the creative community than the apparent failing of the newsprint and magazine industry. That is, that the idea of paid journalists whose full-time career is writing short non-fiction copy is only about 100 years old. Before that, most writing was non-professional. Could it be that we have been living in a heyday of pay for print copy, and the number of employed writers is declining, not to rise again for God knows how long?

I don’t know, and i’m standing by to see what comes next.