Today is a snapshot of the future of print journalism
Jason Renaud is the co-founder of the Mental Health Association of Portland and a candidate for Portland City Council, see www.jasonforportland.com
Open your daily newspaper, or go online and scan the news sites. You’ll find scant “new” news. Don’t get scared. It’s just today as managing editors part out holiday leave.
In the post-holiday edition press releases puff up to front pages stories, recipes get printed in larger type, the op ed and letters to the editor bin gets shaken out.
What we read is the future where few if any journalists gather the news, type in a sensible and somewhat impartial manner, print on cheap paper, find adverting dollars to supplant the various costs, and throw it on your doorstep each morning.
Every indicator shows the complicated 20th century process of journalism is going away. Even old elephants like The Oregonian are desperately slimming their content to appear fresh and lively to the ADHD crowd. Soon, because of the collective failed business plan, we’ll all be starved and gobbling twitter-feed for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Here’s the problem. Those who gather news hold a powerful and integrated position, expressing what our governments are doing both for us and to us. It’s their reports, gathered and printed and thrown on our collective doorstep, which present a sense of the right and wrong our taxes support.
Now, versus five years ago, when I attend public meetings, I see fewer journalists attending. The effect of slimming is many public meetings independent reporting at all, certainly no dialectic aimed at truth.
Governments have relied on independent new gathers to distribute accurate information for decades. Good public administrators know journalism is a portion of their check-and-balance. It provides credibility and builds trust for public services. And they know without a private press, the manufacturing cost of maintaining credibility and trust is high and dear and at times may have priority.
Something will replace newspapers. We don’t know what, but the advertising market is waiting and needy for a vehicle. Will their vehicle also carry the responsibility of minding the business of government? Or of industry and commerce, of schools and children, of the environment, of science and intellectual progress, of crime and punishment, of the arts and culture, of box scores and recipes?
Highly unlikely.
