People need sources of information they can trust in a manner that fits their lifestyle and time constraints. If newspapers go the way of the Dodo does mean that the sky is falling?
* apologies for the mixed metaphors
Hardly.
Human beings are social animals and newspapers have been part of our social fabric for a very long time. In this digital age of immediate and automatic everything, some of the strands of this fabric are becoming frayed and unraveled.
News functions as a form of diversion and surveillance in society. However, what form this information comes in is shaped by an array of economic, political, social, and cultural practices, habits and routines. How people consume information newspapers constitutes ritualized practice.
Older generations of Americans were habituated to the structure and hierarchy of information that was disseminated and presented through the printed word. This model clearly does not hold true for younger generations who repeatedly show little interest in picking up the newspaper reading habit. I get mushy and emotional when I think about the feeling of holding a newspaper in my hands, albeit a fleeting sensation.
Most of the young people I know today don't understand what the big deal is since they were not raised to make a habit of reading a newspaper. Young people go elsewhere for information or use a combination of sources to fulfill themselves. During my career in journalism I have worked for newspapers in different states that have been sold, merged or closed for various economic reasons. I have seen layoffs, firings, downsizing, and pink slips and walking papers countless times.
When a newspaper dies out part of the community's identity dies with it as well. A newspaper provides a community with a sense of place that cannot be found on the Web.
The newspaper, traditionally, has been the community's historical and social repository of collective knowledge. Radio, television and the Internet do not offer the same temporal and spatial qualities of a newspaper. Perhaps one reason why newspapers are having such a hard time is because tradition takes a long time to change and die out.
Another possible reason is that the corporate newspaper model in this country fails to see change as a positive thing. Change in the corporate world means uncertainty, and is perceived as a threat to the status quo. When cultural practice and ritual is squeezed into a formula for increasing or maintaining profit margins, something will eventually give.
The problem with this is that people have been habituated to rely on and trust the printed word, but this perception is changing. People look upon printed news sources much the same way as they do television news -- with suspicion and incredulity. The capitalist market model embraced by the corporate giants that now dominate press ownership do not appear to value the reader's intolerance to inaccuracy and ambiguity in the news.
Corporate interests are woefully disinterested in encouraging transparency if it means making concessions to changes in human behavior. People "blame the media" for all sorts of problems, but what is rarely discussed is how much of the media is really predicated on the values cherished by business types and not journalists. Rarely do I hear from the media, "Let's blame big business" for the crisis in confidence related to journalistic integrity, or "Let's talk about information alternatives" rather than the health of an old gray lady.
I think that's why big business, and I would like to include any entrenched social institution is this definition, has such a hard time wrapping itself around the de-centralization of information that comes with blogging and the Internet.
I may not be able to hold a blog in my hands like I can a newspaper but I can still get a sense of identity from it. This sense of identity is what makes blogging so unique. No longer are people at ease with trusting the integrity of large corporate issues with information that matters.
The biggest problem facing newspapers today is that they have lost their sense of collective integrity and social responsibility. Integrity in an advanced capitalist society appears to subsumed by a bottom line mentality seeking increased profits over public confidence and trust. At the same time, every opportunity I have had to be employed by newspapers in the past has been based on markets and demand. Therefore, talking about the value of newspapers as a social artifact while discussing why they are fading in the dust of economic and technological transitions is so painful and problematic.