Black and white and read not much longer

The newspaper is the worst form of news media except for all those others that have been tried.
With the year dying and hundreds of newspapers soon to follow it, it’s a good time to look at newspapers and the twaddle that has been said about how bad they are and why they so richly deserve the fate they are suffering.
At the outset it should be said that nothing will adequately replace newspapers for delivering news. Perhaps, if newspapers manage to stay above water long enough to learn how to use the Internet, they may adapt themselves to approach a simulacrum of their faded glory, but that is about all. Television has not and will not replace them, at least as we know it. Television “news” is too wedded to entertainment and there is no reason to think it will do anything but tighten the bond. At one time television reporters and “anchormen” used to openly admit that they were no substitute for a good newspaper, but they no longer do so now that they have more reason to. Only radio can, though rarely does, come close to the engaging and involving relationship with its audience that newspapers have.
Certainly blogs will not replace them. It is to laugh. The supreme irony is that blogs that gloat over the death of—and proclaim their succession to—newspapers exist largely in reaction to them. There are blogs devoted to this and that and the other thing, and they likely will persist and evolve. But “news blogs”—an oxymoron if ever there was one—fageddaboudit! Some bloggers boast proudly of reporting and “breaking” news, but where is the proof of it? If such is actually happening, who knows of it? If they cannot gain the attention—and, what is more, the respect—of their intended audience, what good are they? No doubt it is a conspiracy on the part of newspapers to keep us from knowing about their gallant efforts.
There are bloggers who say people do not understand the purpose of the blogging medium. They’ve got that right. The great majority of media-consumers do not understand it, and the fault is not theirs, but that of blogs and bloggers. A mass or general-use medium whose purpose needs to be understood is in trouble from the get-go. In the bad old days it was, “Here’s a nickel (dime, quarter, half-dollar), just tell me the news and spare me your tales of agony about how hard it was to get it to me.” Now we are asked to please understand the purpose of the medium. La-di-da, how precious. Say what you will about the pretended evil of Old Line Media (aka MSM), they at least are understandable and—especially in this time of rapidly changing and morphing media—make efforts to make themselves into what the consumer wants. Bloggers, on the other hand, take the chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that the consumer is supposed to come to them, rather than the other way around. Good thing they don’t charge for it, because it’s a poor marketing strategy and no way to make a living.
The decline of newspapers has little or nothing to do with blogs. Blogs did not come on the scene and newspapers went all, “Omigod, we’re done for! And no wonder—blogs are so much better. We give up.” One blogger I read said newspapers are toast because they do not write in “intelligent and informed way about topics.” Imagine: For going on three centuries the newspapers in this country failed to write in intelligent and informed ways about topics. One wonders that they lasted three decades, much less three centuries.
As numerous published studies of the mass media have shown, newspapers (and radio) began to decline long before the Internet and blogs were ever thought of. They declined not because of what they are or were, but because of the outside forces arrayed against them. Aside from the actual news being reported and cultural and societal changes, the content and capabilities of newspapers have not substantially altered in 75 years, or perhaps longer. But take the example of radio. For about 30-plus years it was king, along with newspapers. (The rise of radio did not put much of a dent in newspaper circulation or popularity, for reasons too complex to go into here.) When television came along, network radio suffered mightily. Still, it did not die, but rather changed drastically, from a news-drama-comedy medium to something like what we have today. And today’s broadcast radio, I have read (in newspapers!), is also sinking rapidly now, beset by the same forces that afflict TV and newspapers. Big-time network radio did not die because it refused to give listeners what they wanted; it died because it could not give listeners what they wanted, which was television, the nascent medium. And now television, too—network, independent, and cable—is suffering, beset by the outside forces I have mentioned: people spending their time on DVDs, video games, and surfing the Net, among other things.
Newspapers have met somewhat the same fate. They have been failing for, just to name a few problems: (1) distribution difficulties; (2) the dominance of television; (3) the decline in factory work, which means that Pa did not come home early in the afternoon and read the afternoon paper (the dominant edition for most of U.S. newspaper history); (4) the growth in two-wage-earner families, so that everyone has less time to devote to a newspaper; (5) the competition from ever-increasing types of electronic entertainment.
Newspapers, weakened as they are and unable to support the staffs they once had, are still on the whole about as good as they have been for decades, aside from poorer spelling and grammar, which is a failing not just in newspapers but across the board (and particularly in blogs, I cannot fail to add). They are dying not because they are bad, but because they cannot compete with the raucous demands of other distractions. They are dying because readers now expect to get free on the Internet what once they had to pay for in print. You could even say that the remaining, and steadily declining, numbers of paying subscribers are supporting what might be called Internet freeloaders.
They should enjoy it while they can; it won’t last long. When newspapers’ income vanishes, so will their product, print and online. When they are entirely gone, we will be the poorer for it. I hope, but do not expect, that something equally useful takes their place, but of one thing I am sure: It is not and will not be bloggers. Newspapers gave us the news, radio did, television did (in decreasing degrees of competence), but Fred’s Pretty Good Blog never will.