Date posted: September 5, 2008 - Friday
Title: An Untimely Death
Current mood: Saddened
I am a newspaper subscriber.
I was a newspaper reporter and editor.
My college undergraduate degree is in journalism.
I once wrote a column about what it meant to me to be working on a newspaper. I was chastised by an editor for calling it a profession because, I was told, to be a profession it had to require a degree and testing to gain a certification.
So, with all this as a preamble, I happened upon a quote in the latest issue of Newsweek that stirred up some thoughts in me.
The quote was from Roger Ebert, the film critic of the Chicago Sun Times. He was commenting on the rather rude departure of a former sports writer for the paper. This reporter (Jay Mariotti) quit the paper in what was described as a huff and went to become a television reporter leaving behind a quote for interviewers; "newspapers are dead."
I can understand Ebert's abrupt reply advising the reporter not to let the door hit him in the ass as he was leaving. If I was still working in journalism for a paper I might have expressed the same sentiments.
Newspaper work is not easy. It is challenging to sit for endless hours in a meeting, taking notes and hoping one of the politicians there will actually say something that is reasonably intelligent, relevant to the subject at hand and worth quoting. It is tricky interviewing people and trying to get information from them which is important to the public at large. The hours are long, the pay is absurd and the opportunities for advancement are few.
And, having listed the negatives that make a career in journalism less than an ideal choice, it is still interesting work and something we as a people need.
I too have heard the cry that newspapers are dead. My local paper is up for sale. I have walked to the end of my drive some mornings and been stunned by the thin sheaf of newsprint I am picking up.
I picked up the Sunday edition this last week and turned to the help wanted section. Where in years past this was a fat section of 10 or more pages, this Sunday it was exactly two pages of advertisements for employment. Newspapers live and die by classified advertising and this sparse section not only told me there was little available in the way of work, but the paper had to be in trouble if there was so little advertising being placed.
I have seen the stories and research which says most people are getting their news from television. And television news seems to me to be so surface and artificial. No story lasts more than about a minute and a half; if that. And even the local news only shows the stories which can be told through visuals and doesn't spend any time on subjects that need more depth. The documentary form which once prospered on television is now as rare as the spotted owl.
I have also watched as papers all over the country turn to the Internet as a means of distributing their information and hopefully gain another stream of revenue to keep them operating. I suspect the Internet is not going to be the future of newspapers. For six months I wrote a weekly news roundup and commentary and posted it here on MySpace. I think the most hits I had in a week reached slightly over
