The folding of the Fourth Estate

Print is dying, and a story in today’s New York Times says it all:

It’s been an especially rotten few days for people who type on deadline. On Tuesday, The Christian Science Monitor announced that, after a century, it would cease publishing a weekday paper. Time Inc., the Olympian home of Time magazine, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated, announced that it was cutting 600 jobs and reorganizing its staff. And Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, compounded the grimness by announcing it was laying off 10 percent of its work force — up to 3,000 people.

Clearly, the sky is falling. The question now is how many people will be left to cover it.

It goes on. The day before, the Tribune Company had declared that it would reduce the newsroom of The Los Angeles Times by 75 more people, leaving it approximately half the size it was just seven years ago.

The Star-Ledger of Newark, the 15th-largest paper in the country, which was threatened with closing, will apparently survive, but only after it was announced that the editorial staff would be reduced by 40 percent.

And two weeks ago, TV Guide, one of the famous brand names in magazines, was sold for one dollar, less than the price of a single copy.

Well, it looks like I got out of newspapers at the right time. The ship was sinking then, but now it’s bottomed up and preparing for a vertical dive straight to the bottom, the graveyard of capitalism.

In the world of the print media — where 90 percent of revenue is generated by advertisement fees — it’s survival of the cheapest. Print ads are expensive and are seen by fewer people every day; online ads cost a couple bucks and receive thousands of views each hour. The audience shift from print to online is good for advertisers, but bad for newspapers, reporters, and the general public.

To cope with the erosion of advertising revenue, newspapers are cutting costs by reducing staff and coverage. As a former reporter, I think this is disastrous. The NYT article says it best:

New Jersey, a petri dish of corruption, will have to make do with 40 percent fewer reporters at The Star-Ledger, one of the few remaining cops on the beat. The Los Angeles Times, which toils under Hollywood’s nose, has one movie reviewer left on staff. And dozens of communities served by Gannett will have fewer reporters and editors overseeing the deeds and misdeeds of local government and businesses.

I’ve always believed that newspapers and journalists are public defenders. They seek, investigate, and expose the ills of our society. It’s the job of a newspaper to keep the public informed and educated about what is happening in their community, good and bad. Reporters keep a suspicious eye on politicians, police, and businessmen. Everything they do that is unethical, unfair, and at the expense of the public good is uncovered (in the ideal world), becoming welcome evidence of wrongdoing for journalists, editors, and readers. With reduced staff and coverage capabilities, newspapers will be less able to police our towns and cities, even our nation. Leaving politicians and their bedfellows unchecked will be disastrous.

Sure, the news (what’s left of it, that is) gets shifted online, but that poses a different danger. Remember Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four? His job at the Ministry of Truth was to rewrite newspaper articles and historical documents so they align with the changing policies of The Party. He even deleted the names of people who had been liquidated, making it seem as if they never existed. This type of alteration is something the Soviets and Nazis did. The ever changing nature of online media, and the easy editing features available with online publication tools, make historical rewriting an easy and viable option for anyone who wants to do it. And who’s going to notice? There’s no paper evidence to prove facts and articles were published, or even that events happened. Anything can be erased or altered with the stroke of a few keys. Add the fact that the media industry is being controlled by fewer and fewer people every year (in 1983 there were 50 major media companies in the United States; in 1996, after consolidation begun by the Reagan administration, only 10 were left; after further consolidation ushered by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, only six remained in 2005) and you have the possibility of an all-digital, selective media monopoly capable of printing what it wants and not printing everything it doesn’t.

The press is free…for anyone who can afford a press.