Maybe we need papers after all...
9:04 AM Sat, Nov 29, 2008 | Permalink
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This New England |
A bit of good news for newspapers. A bunch of Connecticut state legislators is asking the Nutmeg State's economic-development commissioner to prevent two daily newspapers, one in New Britain and one in Bristol, from closing. The Journal Register Co. , which, like many newspaper companies. is in disaster mode, plans to close up to 13 newspapers it owns in the state if a buyer isn't found by Jan. 12. The New Britain Herald and the Bristol Press are among them.
Municipal officials fear that if the communities lose their hometown newspapers that all sorts of other businesses will suffer, as well as the self-esteem of New Britain and Bristol residents, who want the prestige of having their own daily publications. Officials say that economic-development efforts would be set way back by the papers' closing. It seems that the meanderings of unpaid bloggers on a screen like this (yours truly is still being paid!) don't come up to snuff. (Photo: "Len Ganeway,'' by Derek Wernher)
Even public officials are starting to think that a future without local newspapers and their scrutiny of government and other communuity affairs would not be quite the unalloyed pleasure for them that they may have dreamed about. And taxpayers must be starting to fear that their interests will be eaten and left as bleached bones in the sun after the nosy local papers disappear. Who would then be left to watch the politicians, the civil servants, the local businessesspeople and other movers and shakers -- the unpaid blogger in pajamas? Or if he or she were to be paid, would it be by one of the movers and shakers? 
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Thanks for the encouraging words!
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I can't tell you how disappointed I am to hear journalists like you and Steve Collins be open to the idea of government money being used to help save a newspaper. While it's clear you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when it comes to most people who blog; I'd rather get my news from a guy in his pajamas then a newspaper tainted by government money.
It is time for journalists, especially newspaper people, to man up! Nothing, absolutely nothing is going to bring the newspaper industry back to what it once was, but that doesn't mean the news industry is going out of business. It's not a matter of either you have newspapers or you don't have news. It's that kind of arrogance that's also hurt the newspaper industry.
It's supposed to be our job as journalists to report the truth, but before you can write about the truth, you need to know the truth. What proof do you have that bloggers get 90 percent of its news from local papers. I can tell you none of the bloggers I know are getting any useful information they would want to use from Steve's paper, while Steve is a good reporter The Bristol Press. It's not a very good newspaper.
It's clear your truth begins and ends with newspapers. That is a very myopic perspective. It might also help explain why you would be so willing to sell your journalistic soul to grab taxpayer money to help save a dying industry.
You asked who will watch politicians if newspapers are allowed to die? A better question: who will watch journalists willing to accept money from the same people they are supposed to be watching.
Finally, we don't need a government handout, but we do need to stop whining about crappy newspapers going out of business and figure out how we're going to move forward in reporting news, when the newspaper isn't the primary distribution vehicle.
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Rick hits many nails on the head here...if blog-world needed any help in hastening the demise of a free and viable press, government subsidization could be just the ticket, and the pressmen would do wise to learn a new skill.
Give the money to out of work bloggers sitting at home in their jammies wishing the publishers they used worked for weren't so backward, greedy or both.
Or give the money to Rupert Murdoch so he can complete his run on Chinese tv and not have to lay off any more American workers in order to balance some books on the other side of the world; that's what happened with the local daily here on Cape Cod last month.
The net result: the paper has an even harder time gathering and disseminating the news, fewer people to do it, and presumably about six more people at home in their jammies to compete with.
I don't know about Connecticut or Rhode Island, but if the government were going to bail out the Massachusetts newspaper industry, they wouldn't actually have to visit the commonwealth. Our owners are in London, New York, their names buried deep on lists of corporate gobbledygook. Pop quiz: Who owns the Boston Herald? I mean, really, who would ya call? Holding companies all.
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Just to clarify, I don't think the state should bail out the newspapers either. What I want to see is state help to find a new owner and an effort to make sure the new owner knows what programs exist for all businesses seeking to retain jobs in Connecticut.
I don't think Rick and I disagree as much as his comments might indicate.
I would say, though, that he's wrong about the Press. It's been a good paper for generations and even 14 years of JRC management haven't undone that. If it's not relied on by bloggers, it's only because bloggers don't give a damn about Bristol. That's why we need a newspaper!
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