I was eight years old in the mid-20th century when a family friend asked me, “Billy – What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Without a moment’s hesitation, I responded, “I want to be a newspaper reporter.”
That was a logical response, as I came from a family living in northern Ohio, where my parents subscribed to five daily newspapers – the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Cleveland Press, the Lorain Journal, the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, and the Christian Science Monitor. And I have many memories of my parents, brothers, and I sitting around the breakfast table going through, passing around, and discussing the content of this cornucopia of papers.
Now, some 70 years later, the morning Cleveland Plain Dealer is online and publishes a print version only four days a week, the Cleveland Press closed in 1982, the Lorain Journal publishes little real news and is online and switched from afternoon delivery to morning distribution, the Chronicle-Telegram is online and publishes four days a week, and the Christian Science Monitor, also online, prints and mails its newspaper only once a week.
And it’s unlikely any eight-year-old today would give that same “I want to be a newspaper reporter” response.
In the 21st century, where there are one-third fewer newspapers than was the case in the 20th century. Recent news has the Midwest newspaper chain, News Media Corp, announcing it is shuttering its 41 newspapers in a five-state area. This company’s longtime newspapers often were the primary source of news in many small towns and rural areas.
Unfortunately, people who get their news and information primarily or exclusively online do not seem well attuned to or concerned with what is happening in Washington, D.C., or The White House. Too, the opinion pieces written in today’s small and dwindling number of print publications seem to attract few readers.
There seems to be little hope that this trend will reverse itself anytime soon and that the public will begin to pay greater attention to what’s happening in the news. And such a trend, if it continues, will likely spell the death knell of many more newspapers.
While one would hope higher education might help attract new journalism students, my university teaching experience at colleges in the U.S., China and Britain, where journalism education once attracted a healthy crop of budding reporters, appears a thing of the past as many universities have either closed journalism education or morphed it into public relations, advertising and communication/media programs.
If there is to be a light at the end of the journalism news tunnel, its beacon may come from families and friends once again sitting down to chat, discuss and argue about the news of the day. Subscribing, of course, and discussing the news not only in The Durango Herald and other newspapers, but in magazines, in broadcast/television and on the many online venues.
Other ways to support journalism include sharing news articles with others, writing letters to the editor or op-eds, and in today’s environment, standing up for press freedom and against government secrecy and censorship. It’s really up to us to help keep journalism’s lights on. Inaction will not be good for journalism or the future of our country. So, let’s see what we all might do to help stem the newspaper circulation decline and resuscitate American journalism.
William Babcock, before retiring to Durango, worked for the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram and Christian Science Monitor before teaching journalism and media ethics at a variety universities.
