Requiem for a dying medium
If a newspaper falls in the forest will anyone read it before it turns to compost?
Answer me this: QR code or printed menus? The smell of newsprint, or a PDF on your phone?
I only ask because I’m conflicted too. I use both. That PDF file on a six-inch screen is annoying to read, but is easily magnified by pinching its vector format with two fingers. A newspaper, however, folded and crumpled (and even slightly out of date) still draws me in. I keep old copies of the Wall Street Journal in my magazine rack in my class (Note to Gen Z: Yes, we did have something called magazine racks!) This means reading material is just footsteps away from my students. No need to click, mess with captchas, or try to dodge that paywall.
There’s a deeper reason I ask ‘who reads news?’ I want to know who reads beyond the clickbait headline and the first graph? Video clips are the boss of news. At least in my network. Which brings me to the existential question for a teacher: Should we teach writing? If a newspaper falls in the forest of TikToks will anyone look? Meanwhile, here’s what we publish — both in print and as a digital version.
As I buck the trend and get my students to write news stories for print — yes print! — I rewind the tape on my spiel about about story craft. It matters no matters what platform their story is fed through. That old-school who-what-when-where-why model never gets old. Consider these two headlines:
“OpenAI CEO exit shocks AI world.” Washington Post
“Advertisers flee X as outcry grows over Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic post.” New York Times
The latter story begins with “the blowback over Elon Musk’s endorsement…” The choice of words like ‘outcry’ and ‘blowback’ are not there by accident. The writer (and editor) was making sure we did not stop reading after the first two paragraphs. You have to read halfway down into the story (by now you’ve gone past the paywall) to read how Musk’s $44 billion acquisition is now worth $19 billion. I can’t see an influencer on TikTok having the stamina to interview, fact-check and craft a long form story with the same story depth and skill. Each of the 18 paragraphs (yes, 18!) packs new information. I find it interesting how long form journalism (still) lives in the attention deficit age. As I said before, it never gets old.
But to return to my earlier point, do we have a critical mass of readers today who will consume original news — as opposed to screenshots and opinions? That, I fear, is dwindling faster than the number of pictures of avocado toast that spiked during Covid.
We are now living in ‘news deserts.’ This being News Literacy Week, I ran into some disturbing facts via The Medill School of Journalism about the crisis in journalism.
>> Since 2005, the U.S. has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers. Of about 6,000 newspapers left standing (600!) most of them are weeklies.
>>According to their projected model, 228 counties are now at an elevated risk of becoming news deserts in the next five years.
>> Here’s a sobering thought about why this is happening. Poynter estimates that Google and Meta owe U.S. publishers between $11.9 and $13.9 billion a year.
>>There has been a move to get Big Tech to pay their dues, with lobby groups and a senate bill, Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2023.
>> The Los Angeles announced this week that it would lay off about 115 journalists. That would cut its newsroom by more than 20 percent.
What then? Let’s start by addressing where do we get our first frame of news? Is it (a) Our network? (b) An app on our phone? (c) That 30-minute TV news segment with a talking head? For years I have been getting my news via Google News. It always felt slightly unethical since I know Google doesn’t pay news organizations to carry the stories. I now pay for an online news subscription to a major newspaper, and have an annual subscription to two magazines. I don’t want to cry at the funeral of newspapers, while carrying the coffin nails in my pocket. Neither do I want my students to do so, if I can help it. Perhaps they would one day reach for the dead-tree version in my magazine rack.
In my media class students interview subjects, fact check, and do their homework for an interviewee that may take just five minutes. Then, they must use their notes to craft the story in a way that someone may read and be enlightened. If we don’t preserve storytelling and story craft at a young age, we could end up with the journalism we fear we are doomed to have. We could be overrun by the meme makers, the conspiracy theory factories, or even the angry consumers of TikTok headlines who don’t care who wrote the story, nor read beyond paragraph one. If you’ve read this far, I thank you.
On a positive endnote, consequent to a German news study, Google agreed to pay over 300 publishers in Germany, France and four other European Union countries for their news.
But what about us? Are we willing to pay for journalism in the same way that we splurge on coffee or donuts? To repeat, I don’t want to cry at the funeral of newspapers, while carrying the coffin nails in my pocket.
