Harvard mag story: "The decline of the hard-copy newspaper appears irreversible"

This isn't the same Tom Patterson who worked on The National and was ESE of the Denver Post, this one is a career academic.

I'm not sure what to make of the part about teachers turning to national media for news. Could that be because most local newspapers are no longer running enough world and national news to provide even the minimum for an educated person? Further, what does it say about teachers, that they don't see it as part of their jobs to read about whatever community they work in and train their students to do likewise? Or does the wording "mostly depend" mean they read both the local and national media but get more out of the national media? In other words, are they saying teachers mostly ignore the local paper, or that they do read it and find it less fulfilling than nytimes.com? And might there also some kind of snobbism built in -- a teacher, presumably an intellectual, saying he reads the NYT or WSJ rather than admitting he gets his news from the Podunk Gazette?

 

I'll add, too, that when I was in high school (Class of 1977), there were stacks of NYTs at the entranceway free for the taking -- the school ignored the local paper and the other papers in our state and went to some effort to have its students read the NYT instead. I'm guessing they wanted us exposed to the most thorough newspaper instead of a local paper that ran front-page art of local residents holding unusually large vegetables (Here's Zeke and his giant zucchini) and frequently led the paper with news of the Solid Waste Advisory Council. But the school also ignored a pretty good 400K in our state. And I'll also add that by the end of the school day, well, if you hadn't grabbed a paper in the morning, no hurry, plenty of unused copies available at 3 p.m. Kids didn't read the paper much then, either.

A history teacher made us pick a news topic in September and for the rest of the school year clip anything that pertained to it every day from the NYT and glue it in a notebook(s). It was a good way to get kids into the newspaper, but kids saw it as a chore.

 

In our town, the grade schools are cutting back on textbook purchases. And there often are not enough of the old ones to go around.

On the bright side, kids are ditching homework by telling the teacher they couldn't log on.

 

There are a couple of things you could poke holes in this article.

In the first place, afternoon papers declined for a bunch of reasons. One was the fact that communiting times and moves to the suburbs meant people got home a later in the afternoon. The decline of manufacturing jobs, where people generally ended their work day earlier, also was a factor.

Improved procedures also meant there could be more late sports information in morning papers. And television had a bigger effect not so much because of news programming increasing but because more people would watch television during prime time, something which would be bound to cut down on newspaper reading in the evening.

 

The NYT weighs in today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/business/media/07paper.html?ref=media&pagewanted=all

 

Newspapers were doomed when TV "news" started. Personally I HATE to read anything longer than a brief online, it's too much of a strain on my eyes, give me the paper anyday. I enjoy multimedia stuff and think there is a place for both and as long as newspapers are willing to adapt things will be ok. Besides, with small circ. papers especially, how often will parents of high school and little league kids make a printout of a web page and put it up on the refrigerator? My guess is as long as people keep procreating and going to the bathroom, there will be some type of printed newspaper.

 

I hope you're right, but I don't think you are... I know a lot of people who read their iPhones or blackberries over breakfast the same way they did with the old morning paper...

 

Probably just wishful thinking... but I have my fingers crossed

 

Whenever I fly, I usually buy multiple papers.

I always look around to see how many other people are reading. I can usually count on some nicely dressed guy in his 50s to be reading some hard-copy business publication -- sometimes a newspaper business section, but more often a magazine.

And there's usually one guy scanning USA Today -- like the articles are too long and too complicated.

I never see anyone else reading a paper. Never a woman. Never a young person.

They must think I get the paper delivered to my cave.

 

I have a friend who works in radio and is a constant state of agitation about all the cutbacks there. One program director for multiple stations, other people working for three stations, basically 25 people expected to do the work that used to be handled by 75 employees.

It's corporate America, and it's not restricted to the newspaper business.

 

Yeah, radio is a nightmare. Those folks have a message board, too, and they are as gloomy about radio's future as newspaper people are about newsprint:

http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?board=319.0

I talked to a few radio people a few years ago for a story idea that we never wound up doing about how radio in this state has been eaten alive by Clear Channel with "voice tracking." It's a similar principle as newspaper "clustering" except over much wider geographic areas. In voice-tracking, a single DJ can serve several markets at a time, thousands of miles apart, by prerecording sound bites that are interspersed by computer between songs. Clear Channel is at the forefront. This wouldn't be as newsy if the companies that employ this tactic weren't trying so hard to hide it. The DJs go onto newspaper Web sites so they can mix in local references to the cities that they serve but
never visit. (But embarrassing mistakes can be made that way!) A DJ can record a six-hour show in less than an hour, so he can record shows for about six stations in a single shift.