Last week, after ending a long ordeal with trains and travel for work, I had a call.. AYDEN, my second grader son, needed a newspaper!!
Friday night!?
A newspaper!?
The demand was met with a ferocious hunt for the Pottsville REPUBLICAN.. somewhere…
So here I found myself in a strange 20th century predicament: Trying to find the ole’ fishwrapper.. print media!
My 21st century son was thrust into the world of NEWSPAPERS IN EDUCATION WEEK thanks to his school.. All week long, kids were informed, we had to read the paper.. had to find an article… had to celebrate the black and white rag that is not read all over, and especially hunt for the classifieds where teachers would be busy putting ads into secret sections in order for kids to find them, get instructions, and claim the reward in school the next day.
It worked brilliantly, too! Because by Friday night at 10pm, all REPUBLICAN HERALDS were sold out across Northern Schuylkill County. Plenty of NEWS ITEMS remained… plenty of STANDARD SPEAKERS.. and even a few NEW YORK DAILY NEWS…
I have long loved the notion of how news media evolved in this country.. how we came from newsboys screaming “EXTRA” on busy street corners across America.. At one time in this country, newspapers were published as much as thrice a day and featured gossipy snippets of bluster, rumors of affairs, and disjointed unsourced scathing essays on scandals of the times they were published. Yes, newspapers of record were once tabloids of choice! Exciting print media ….. replaced in the 21st century by the internet machine, churning away with explosive exposes that papers now won’t touch… The 21st century, where pay walls separate people from the print they once loved… now they forget as they get their news in less characters with less character on Facebook and Twitter..
Newspaper in Education Week (NIE) is commemorated and celebrated annually during the first full school week in March. Newspaper in Education (NIE) is an international program that encourages the use of the daily newspaper as a “living textbook” for students from primary through adult education levels..
The NIE is a novel approach to attempting to keep some history in the hallowed halls of education.. But the real reason may be profit.. After all, it’s been a LONG time since any newspaper I saw sold out.. what better reason than to get some treats or prizes by buying up the print edition for a school related purpose.. Staying relevant by desire.. not because people desire, but because a teacher makes it a duty…
But if you want to feast your print-dyed fingers on something more crucial to the future of newspapers, consider this information widely circulated in late 2018:
The weekday circulation of U.S. newspapers has been in steady decline since 1998, when it was 62.7 million. Today their print and digital circulation combined reaches only about 31 million, according to the Pew Research Center.
Newspapers’ ad revenue plummeted from $48 billion in 2000 to $16.5 billion in 2017…
And maybe the NIE week led to a quick hit of profit, but it’s not rosy in the world of black and white: Newsrooms employ almost 40 percent fewer people than they did in 1994, and “newspaper reporter” was rated “the worst job in America” for four years running, according to CareerCast, which ranks jobs based on factors such as stress, risks, compensation, and opportunity for growth…
While the digital world has consumed our consumption of news gathering, I hold a special place in my heart for the world that once was..
In high school, I got a pretty beautiful award that still hangs above my desk I type away on my online blog.. I was the scholastic journalist award in 1997 for helping bring back a once dead high school newspapers at the now dead Cardinal Brennan.. I also went on to be employed by the REPUBLICAN for my first job–ironically I was working there during their newspapers in education cycle when I was busy posting different websites online.. the digital director at the time new what was coming and was trying to get the REPUBLICAN HERALD into the 21st century.. sadly the paper has been bought up by a bigger entity that seemingly won’t even allow the paper to change their web structure or publish breaking news on social media in a timely fashion.
And that, that alone, is why newspapers are dying..
Newspapers would maintain their credibility and respect if they didn’t go quietly into the night of the trash heap of history..
Locally, SKOOK NEWS and the COAL REGION CANARY are among the news curators of our region… Seldom are NEWS ITEM or REPUBLICAN HERALD stories shared online.
Some would assess the situation this way: SPEED SELLS! Websites that don’t worry about an editor can publish fast and free–maybe even some would say loose. Those who support the old print dead days would argue that the newspapers of record are those that wait to summarize the news the next day..
But we are so over that.
What is news at this hour is old the next..
We move on fast.
We stop caring within moments…
And yes, when our children appear in the newspaper, we still desire to go out and buy the rag and clip out the article for posterity…
We will have to come to grips with our seemingly hypocritical desire for fast news for print on demand…. Because one will die.
Newspapers..
They will die.
Newspapers in Education week will die..
And with that death? … well…. we will see the consequences that await our choices..
