Maybe If they Hired Better Carriers…
Whenever I start to doubt exactly what I should be doing in my life; when I start to question if I really am a writer in the true sense of the word; if my love of the written word is true, I needn’t look any further than my own reaction to stories about dying newspapers.
This past week, The Rocky Mountain News in Colorado published its last edition. It had been in business for 150 years. One-hundred and fifty years. Their owners, the mammoth Scripps Co., made their decision based solely on the bottom line. Ad revenues were down, circulation was in trouble, the internet had horned in on their territory, and with a stroke of the pen, the paper was put up for sale. When no buyers appeared after a month, the Powers That Be decided to call it a day.
My heart broke for them.
Although I’d never picked up an edition of the Rocky Mountain News, I’d always known of its existence, and viewed it with the same respect as I do the New York Times, The Detroit Free Press, The Chicago Tribune, and any of the long-standing papers on this side of the border, I read the reasoning behind the closure: The age-old argument that Denver simply couldn’t sustain two major dailies; that the Post was kicking their asses, and of course online news sources were taking their readers in different directions. Of course, this got me thinking about the public at large, and just how dumbed-down the news business has become.
In these last twenty years, we seemed to have worked ourselves into such a goddamned hurry that we claim to not have time to read the newspaper. We seem to want it short and pithy; We basically want the headlines, a quick explanation, and then we want to move on. Initially, that’s what gave the tabloids their boost over old broadsheet faithfuls. They gave us the bits and pieces, mixed it with lots of sports and scantily-clad women on page 3, threw in enough ads to make it work, and left the old standbys in their dust. We increasingly relied on television to tell us about our world as we hastily threw together our evening meals. With that, even our local radio stations starting cutting back their news budgets. We, as a public, just didn’t have the time to support them.
Now, the online age is upon us with a vengeance. We get news delivered to our phones, our Blackberries, and our laptops, we quickly scan, we absorb about half, and we move on with our day. We watch TV a little less in the evenings as we get dinner ready and rush out the door to evening commitments, and we seem scarily content to know as little as we can about what’s going on in the world.
With that, newspapers are dying, and the multimedia conglomerates are suffering (It was also revealed last week that the CanWest juggernaut was sputtering).. Hell, even the CBC is having troubles.
I’ve always started the day with at least one newspaper, and for a gazillion years, that was the Toronto Star. Although I was packing up to head west and knew full well that I couldn’t keep getting the paper, it absolutely killed me to cancel my subscription. It was like saying goodbye to an old friend. A morning ritual of reading the paper with that first coffee in hand is what gets my brain going in the morning. For the last three years or so, that experience was enhanced by the fact that I had the best newspaper carrier on God’s Green Earth. Chitra had that paper at my door no later than 4:30 most mornings. It was placed at the door, or at the very least well onto the front step. If there was any chance of rain or snow, it would be in a bag (I had no mailbox or screen door). When I gave Chitra a Christmas trip and thanked (I’m not sure if it was “him” or “her”, as we never met) them for the great service, I received a thank-you card back, thanking me for thanking them.
A month or so ago, I signed up for the Edmonton Journal here, assuring Ray that the experience would be just the same. We immediately embraced it, reading together over our first coffees, and clucking about the state of the world. It was heavenly, on mornings that the paper would arrive.
A seven-day subscription never worked out that way. Each week, the carrier would miss a day, then deliver, then miss two days, then deliver. We felt like second-class customers, waking up and wondering “if”, rather than wondering “what” would meet us when we reached into the mailbox.
But let’s get back to the point of all of this: I, like many, love newspapers. I love to take the time, feel the newsprint between my fingers, absorb the words that lay before me. (Books have the same effect on me). I absorb far less of what I read online, and I don’t have anything delivered to my desktop or my telephone. I need that pause in my day, that treat, that newsprinty information fix. But alas, the carrier killed it.
Maybe if the dailies paid a bit closer attention to their daily circulation and home delivery customers, it might help matters a bit. But the bottom line boils down to you and me. We have to preserve our newspapers and newsmagazines. We simply have to. These hundred-year-old institutions have stood the test of time because they’re damn good at what they do, and we, the hurried, self-absorbed public have let them down.
Try a little experiment this week: Take the time to pop into your local store and buy a paper, then sit down and read it. You don’t even need to sit down: My favourite place to read the paper is on the stove (burners off, of course), right under the light. Feel the pages and read the stories. Read the comics and do the crosswords. Whatever you do to enhance that newspaper experience, do it. The next day, try doing it again.
Local and national newspapers are put together by people who care. They are passionate professionals who need our support, and the only we we can support them is by slowing down a little bit, and reading their words.
