The Times they are a changin' (Part one)

Over the last few months I have been reading about the closure of a number of local newspapers around the USA. I had never read the Rocky Mountain News or the Seattle Post-Intelligencer but it gave me pause for thought. It was ironic that I had actually read the news about the closure of the papers on the internet. For me the weekends have always involved the pleasure of spreading out all the newspapers (three on Saturday and two on Sunday) and tossing the various sections to the four corners of the room. Part of the pleasure of the weekend papers when at home in Robinvale is the communal sense as we rummage to find the part that we find, hoping it is not too smeared by vegemite or coffee or porridge stains. There is something pleasingly finite about taking the paper sections that you want and reclining on a couch with a coffee. The attraction of the newspaper is certainly not a sensory experience like, for example, an old book. The newsprint stains your hand, smudges on clothes and furniture coverings and there is that chemical odour to the paper that is distinctly unappealing. Notwithstanding the drawbacks of reading the paper it was something I missed when I came to San Diego. With all due respect to the San Diego Tribune it wasn’t a paper that had any news I felt I wanted to read. Then we discovered that we could have the New York Times delivered on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I was in heaven! I’ll leave aside the weekly battle to find out why I can regularly have the paper delivered two out of the three days, but for some inexplicable reason they can’t get their act together for the Sunday delivery. The people in Sales in New York must dread my call each week complaining. But leaving my grouching about the delivery aside, it is nice to unfold the paper again, like I have done for so many years in Robinvale, Melbourne and Yandoit.
Lest it be thought that this blog is merely another Luddite rant against the new technologies (though I do so enjoy them) I have to confess that I am torn over the question of newspapers. My morning ritual has been changed forevermore with the advent of the internet, so much that I now find myself taking my coffee to the computer and spending the next half hour (well okay, hour or more) scanning the on-line editions of newspapers. First I click on the Melbourne papers, the Age and cross over to the Herald-Sun to see the football news. Then it is across to the UK where I check on the Guardian, the Independent, the BBC world news site, the Times and, if there is football in the news, I may even end up on the website of the Telegraph. To the US then and I look at the NY Times and then the “local” paper in the LA Times. Which is all confirmation of the fact that many of you knew – academics have far too much time on their hands. If there is a breaking political story I will then trip across to the Huffington Post for the myriad of blogs and who knows where that might take me. It is like going on a Magical Mystery Tour – I might start out reading about the British politicians who have been rorting the system by claiming from the British public the cost of upkeep for the moats around their country residence but, rest assured, I will deviate and detour down any number of newspaper by-ways and side-ways. It is suddenly essential to know (courtesy of the New York Times) about the resurgence of absinthe or (from the Independent) why Fred Perry was a working class boy who was never accepted by the upper class toffs at Wimbledon or, well I could go on, but you get my drift. It is like wandering down an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole and never knowing where you will turn up. I can spend literally hours trawling the internet for work-related articles and news and, to work the metaphor further, like a North Sea trawler you will inevitably catch in your net decidedly un-academic items that are just too juicy to pass up. So I confess to loitering in the entertainment pages of the Huffington Post or even …yahoo news! After all we do have a right, nay a need, to know about Madonna marrying her 22 year old boy-toy or Kiefer Sutherland’s latest public melt-down and arrest.
Having access to such a comprehensive and omnipresent source of information would, you would think, lead me to overcome any nostalgic attachment to the old print format newspapers. But recent events have got me to thinking whether it is a good thing. You can argue that it will save trees I suppose, but then there is the question of the thousands of jobs that will be lost. The US government has already made it clear that a bail-out of newspapers does not rank with the banks or even the car makers so it would appear that there is a bleak future for newspapers. It will come as no surprise to learn that even as Rupert Murdoch intimates that newspapers will fold, he is also flagging the inevitability of pay-for-view online newspapers. So I feel a tad miffed that my free newspaper grazing days might come to an end – it is a bit like the way they seduced us to the joys of FM radio with commercial free EON FM back in the day (circa 1980 from memory- with the very cool Jo Jo Zep station identifier) before lurching into the corporate behemoth that it is today.
But it is not just the demise of the national papers that I am thinking about – it is more about the impact of the closure of the middling and little papers (like the Rocky Mountain Herald). There is research that indicates that the papers like the RMH has a pronounced impact upon the level of community engagement within local politics, with less people standing for office and voting. It is also argued that some of the local news that is covered would not be covered in the broadcast media because they do not have as large a reporting staff. Paradoxically it seems that the closure of newspapers in the very small towns has not had such a profound impact upon what they might term “civic engagement”. It is also argued that the small town papers might actually survive because they don’t provide news that is available on the internet and that they have not been dependent upon classified ads in the same way that the major dailies have. The survival of local papers has also be attributed to the different demographic of the small towns (often rural) where the median age is higher than the metropolitan centre and the absence of internet service listings in rural areas (the infamous craigslist in the US for example).
The imminent (or not) demise of newspapers did set me thinking about what it would mean if the Robinvale Sentinel were to close in my old home town. Or for that matter the Riv Herald in Echuca, or the Warrnambool Standard, the Wangaratta Chronicle, the Sunraysia Daily, the LaTrobe Valley Express or the Ballarat Courier. I can’t speak for all these papers from towns which friends have hailed from (or still reside) but I have to say in respect of the Robinvale Sentinel, in the nicest possible way, that is not that much that passes for real reportage. The Sentinel’s photos are usually grainy and badly shot and it all too often prints verbatim the reports made available by local public authorities. With a circulation of 1,200 it is not a paper that has the resources to undertake indepth investigative reporting. There is not that much news of the 6 o’clock broadcast media type that happens. But this is not to say that these papers don’t serve a very useful purpose. They are the once weekly (or more) service that binds together a rural community and advises on meeting times. It is also that which can bring the family together around the table and disrupt the solitary rumination over the daily newspaper The items in the newspaper; be it the reporting of an “incident” in town, or the announcement of a birth, wedding or death or even the local sports news, all serve as a departure point to talking about the real story. There will be an account of a brawl, which the police attended, and then we will hear from my niece or nephews the other side of the story. We will hear other narratives (all hearsay of course) from people who were there. The real reason(s) for the brawl and the aftermath will all be laid out on the table like a deck of cards being dealt for a hand of poker. That is why it saddens me to think of the future demise of the newspaper. Admittedly we will connect more expansively, directly and, arguably, comprehensively through the internet and Facebook and twitter. But there will be something missing and I suspect we will be all the poorer for it.


P.S. Just after I posted this I noticed a news item that Saturday was the last edition of the Tucson Citizen after 138 years. Inside today's New York Times there is also an advertisement for the face of the paper's online version in pdf under the heading of "Welcome to the Future" at nytimes.com/timesreader. It's only a matter of time I fear before the hardcopy newspaper is a thing of the past.