Newspapers

I bought the San Francisco Chronicle the other day. The viability of newspapers has been in question for several years especially how the Internet has eaten into their subscriptions but the economic downturn has exacerbated their downfall. It cost 75¢ ($1.00 if purchased at a retail establishment) and it sadly, it is a pale shadow of what it used to be. While it is more colorful, it is thinner and narrower and has fewer features and articles: its text is larger and there is much more “space”. The front page has banner advertisements and includes a one-page (what used to be two pages) OpEd at the end of the section. The relatively substantial regional Bay Area section is combined with the business section. The Sporting Green front page is once again tinted in green. The Datebook contains the entertainment features, the movie and TV listings, comics, and classifieds. Over the summer I lamented that the Wednesday food section has disappeared. I fear examining the Sunday paper as to how it has been gutted. In the future we may simply have a one-sheet broad sheet with all the sections on it.

Newspapers have a place in our society. Newspapers had the role in documenting pivotal events in history—that magazines and TV just couldn’t do. Even our little histories like births, wedding announcements, and deaths were documented and saved in newspapers. But I lament the cultural place newspapers had in our world. The experience of tingeing one’s fingers with ink after reading the paper will no longer be. I remember my mother cutting out coupons to use at our local grocery store. Old newspaper was used to line our bird cages, to wipe down our windshields, make piñatas and papier mache masks, We used line our bird cages with old newspaper, or used improvisationally to swat flies.

I acknowledge my lack of patronage to the newspaper’s demise. The fact that I get my news via the radio (NPR) and that I (and so many others) find little time in daily life to read the paper. But the death of newspapers. is a real concern not to have a space for democratic discourse, to have investigative reporting, to examine what is happening in other parts of the world and to have a paper of record in our communities. But perhaps this is a temporary challenge for newspapers who will be transformed in ways we will find more useful—I hope.